Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship

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Appendix Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship

This supplementary essay is based on a paper I published in 20101 on perceptions of Okinawa among contemporary South Korean historians.2 The original essay analyzed 165 academic studies on Okinawa-related themes, including many that had been in- dexed by the National Research Foundation of Korea and Japan’s National Diet Library. Retracing the history of South Korean scholarship on Okinawa is useful, first of all, to get a general sense of how Okinawa is perceived in South Korea. This exercise may also help to discover what is lacking in current Okinawan studies in both South Korea and Japan, and where my research should be positioned in that context. My analysis of South Korean scholarship brings into view a kind of theoretical framework in which the more eagerly Okinawa is sought after as a “site of solidarity,” the more Okinawa itself recedes from view, consigning the Battle of Okinawa to obscurity. When I began my analysis, the problem, it seemed to me, was that South Korean scholars were studying the lessons from their own historical experience of colonization not so they could discuss them with their Japanese counterparts, but in order to criticize Japan. Okinawa was just more grist to the mill. In fact, it was South Korean civil-society and human-rights groups who “discovered” Okinawa as a potential site of solidarity in the first place. This genealogical study aims to show how South Korean writing in the field of “Okinawan studies”—initially developed in the fields of ethnog- raphy and historiography—has placed Okinawa in the spectator’s seat. It shows how this trend has been shaped by the environment in which South Korean scholarship developed, reflecting a propensity to differentiate between knowledge derived from social and political engagement and that derived solely from scholarly inquiry. In fact, this critique of South Korean scholarship is also a critique of how basic knowledge about the comfort-women issue itself has been constructed, both in South Korea and Japan. A body of prior research by Japanese and zainichi Korean scholars in

1 Hong, Kankoku ni okeru Okinawa gaku no genzai. This study does not deal with earlier works in the field of literature or those translated from other languages, nor does it include some recent introductory studies of Okinawa-South Korea relations written for general readers. One is Lee Myŏng-wŏn, Tu-gae ŭi sŏm—Chŏhang ŭi yanggŭk, Han’guk kwa Okinawa (South Korea and Okinawa: Two islands, two opposite forms of resistance). Seoul: Samin, 2017. An- other is Oh Sejong, Son Chi-yŏn, trans. Okinawa wa Chosŏn ŭi t’ŭmsae esŏ: Chosŏnin ŭi kasih- wa/pulgasihwa rŭl tullŏssan yŏksa ŭi tamnŏn (Between Okinawa and Korea: On the history and narratives of visualizing/unvisualizing Koreans). Seoul: Somyung, 2019. Full references for works such as those above that are mentioned in passing will be given only in the notes. 2 This essay has been shortened, reorganized, and brought up to date by the author.

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Japan and civil-rights activists doing the yeoman work of locating primary sources, writing papers, and publishing books began accumulating after 1991, when the issue of military sexual slavery entered the public consciousness. It was not until the early 2000s, however, that this problem was treated seriously by the Historical Society of Ja- pan (Shigakukai) and the Women’s Studies Association of Japan (Nihon Josei Gakkai).3 In Japan, between the late 1990s and early 2000s, the focus of public interest shifted from the victim-survivors of Japanese military sexual servititue to the “comfort-women issue,” which became a kind of political bellwether for the revisionist right and was linked to government censorship of history schoolbook content. In both countries, the public, rather than staying abreast of current research, seemed more interested in using the results of such work to buttress or attack particular points of view. A genealogical analysis of this structural problem, which divorces social activism from “pure scholarship,” is useful for understanding how this polarization has developed in the last 20 years or so. Okinawan studies in South Korea have been dominated by the trope of Okinawa as victim. There seems to be little interest in Okinawans themselves, or, most notably, in their personal experiences of war and long-term military occupation. Survivor narratives—memories of the battlefield—have yet to be tapped as poten- tially rich and powerful sources of new, intimate forms of knowledge about militariza- tion, war, and violence against women

1 Yugu or Ryūkyū: What’s in a Name?

Today, South Korea is experiencing an “Okinawa boom.” Of course, Okinawa does not rate high on the list of front-page international news stories. Nonetheless, as Korean interests in Okinawa expand and new narratives involving Okinawa are created by the media and consumed, it is safe to say that Okinawa is trending in South Korea. In my view, however, the Okinawa craze has accelerated two disparate tendencies. It has treated Okinawa as the “other,” while at the same time making Okinawans themselves non-actors at colloquia and other events organized on their behalf by South Korean intellectuals. First, portraying Okinawa as an oriental paradise surrounded by emerald seas, an idyllic honeymoon destination, or the islands of longevity exoticizes it. Secondly, Okinawans are placed on the sidelines when academics try to speak for

3 This was the intellectual environment in which I began writing academic papers in Japanese. In women’s studies, South Korean researchers have focused largely on contemporary history rather than the weighty issues of the colonial era. Searching the National Institute of Infor- matics database of Ph.D. dissertations for the keyword “Chosŏn,” I found 579 dissertations listed, but only seven in the field of women’s history on the Korean peninsula, and all by South Korean authors (including zainichi Korean residents of Japan). My own work is one of the seven.

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 463 them to the South Korean public. The academic posture of purporting to represent Okinawans also renders them onlookers in the spaces reserved for scholarly discourse, thereby denying them agency. The problem with the Okinawa boom lies in its discursive structure. The closer one looks at Okinawa as a space that has been exoticized and “othered,” the more difficult it is to grasp; the more one attempts to emphathize with Okinawans who have been denied agency, the greater the danger of overidentifying with them. When and how does a researcher with a different perspective intervene in such a discourse? Since the act of written intervention immediately calls into question the author’s own positionality, the ethics of writing itself is brought into play. Rather than criticize another researcher’s “othering” gaze, I would prefer, as an engaged writer, to emphasize the possibilities of empathizing with Okinawas while pointing out the dangers of speaking in the name of, and thereby misrepresenting, others based on a misplaced sense of identification. The problem of positionality becomes paramount when “presenting” Okinawa as a fixed entity to South Koreans who are not knowledgeable about the prefecture and its people. Below, I focus on changes in the names that South Korean scholars have used for Okinawa—Yugu and Ryūkyū— as a means of exploring the issues behind such misidentification. This approach will also allow me to track changes in the narrative positions of some leading academics. Korean scholars have commonly employed the names Okinawa (오키나와 in Kore- an transliteration) and Ryūkyū (류큐), which appear to be standard usages in the Han- gul phonetic syllabary. In the 1960s, however, the completely different “Yugu” (유구, the Hangul pronunciation of the Chinese characters 琉球) was commonly employed by historians and folklorists. What changes in South Korean society prompted the shift from Yugu (유구) to Ryūkyū (류큐) in the late 1990s? This query affords me an opening that allows me to intervene and question the academic penchant to objectify Okinawa. Of course, since the 1980s, Korean glosses for foreign place names have increasingly been brought into accord with indigenous pronunciations. This essay, however, con- cerns itself with the conceptual shifts that supported such alterations. It begins by analyzing the transition in naming practices that occurred in the South Korean discourse on Okinawa from the 1960s to the present. It then charts the changing positions of leading scholars within those narrative confines and concludes by asking what it means to write about Okinawa in South Korea today. Four periods are covered here. The first is the 1960s, when Okinawa first appeared in South Korean academic publications. The second period is from 1970 to 1979, when Okinawa was taken up by folklore specialists and coincides with the era of military dictatorship. The third period is from the early 1980s to 1995, when landmark historical studies on Chosŏn-Ryūkyū relations were conducted, and historians adopted “Yugu” for Okinawa. These years coincide in Okinawa with the personal revelations of former Korean comfort women and military laborers (gunpu), alerting public opinion to those

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300845 464 Appendix uresolved war-related issues. The fourth period is from 1996, by which time South Ko- reans had become aware of Okinawa’s contemporary history and the ongoing problem of US military bases. At this point, the term “Ryūkyū” came into wide use, eclipsing “Okinawa” and “Yugu.” Ironically, it was during these years that Okinawa’s secondary role on the sidelines of history was strengthened considerably in South Korean narratives. In the meantiome, the history of Okinawa as a former kingdom called Ryūkyū has enthralled South Koreans, who conflate that legacy with their own history of occupation and colonization by Japan.

1.1 Ryūkyū and Yugu: The 1960s South Korean historians and folklorists “discovered” Okinawan studies in the 1960s, leading to the use of “Yugu” (유구), which is how the the Chinese characters for Ryūkyū (琉球) were normally pronounced in Korean. The 1960s was a decade of social turmoil in Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. The Japanese government’s railroading of the revised US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty through the National Diet on June 19, 1960 raised a storm of popular outrage. Bristling with US military bases, Okinawa became a focus of agitation against the Vietnam War (1964–75) and the center of a mass movement to abrogate American control and return the islands to Japanese sovereignty. The Nixon-Sato Joint Communiqué of 1969, however, betrayed Okinawan expectations by announcing that US bases would remain in Okinawa after reversion (1972), producing widespread anger and consternation. In South Korea, the 1960s began as “the era of freedom and democracy”4 following the April Revolution that toppled Rhee Syngman’s autocratic regime on April 28, 1960. Rhee had been the dominant political force in South Korea since Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonialism in August 1945. The post-Rhee regime lasted only a year, however. In mid-May 1961, Park Chung-hee staged a military coup and established another authoritarian government. During the early 1960s, Japan-rok normalization talks proceded, leading on June 22, 1965, to the signing of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. Perceived by many South Koreans as unfair, the treaty heightened rather than relieved bilateral diplomatic tensions. Before asking where the term Yugu originated, a note about the use of Okinawa in South Korea is in order. The mass media employed “Okinawa” most frequently for only a brief moment in June 1960, when US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, after cancel- ing a trip to Tokyo because of anti-security treaty protests, visited Seoul in late June. At the time, Seoul was filled with hope and bustling with energy. Massive demonstrations had ended the long-standing regime of President Rhee Syngman, and the prospect of democracy was in the air as the achievements of the April Revolution began to sink in.

4 Seo, Kankoku gendaishi rokujū-nen, p. 63.

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The crowd that embraced “Ike” on June 20, 1960 was spontaneous and represented much more than a government-staged welcome. Eisenhower’s visit fell on the 10th anniversary of the start of the Korean War (June 25, 1950–July 27, 1953). The American president was well-viewed in South Korea because he had kept his 1952 campaign promise to end the war, which he did in July 1953. He also criticized the Rhee administration for its fraudulent 1960 elections. Without the full backing of the United States, the South Korean president had no choice but to step down. That alone made Eisenhower a highly popular figure in South Korea. Korean media showed no sympathy for the Japanese people’s democratization movement. News sources painted the struggle against the US-Japan Security Treaty (Ampo) as “violent protests organized by … leftist factions” that had obstructed Eisen- hower’s state visit to Japan, “revealing just how powerful the anti-democratic forces have become in Japan.”5 Biased South Korean media outlets declared that the demonstrations were “ordered by the Communists”6 and lamented that “Japanese student protests are weakening Japan’s position in the free-world order.”7 It was in the fine print of these strident articles that the word “Okinawa” could often be spotted. Okinawa was just one of the places Eisenhower had been scheduled to visit, and the protests occurred the day before he was due to arrive in South Korea. In his rushed two-and-a-half hour visit to Okinawa, Eisenhower was met by a large group of protest- ers demanding that Okinawa be returned under the banner of “reversion to the homeland.”8 South Korean media, however, carried no in-depth reporting on this event. The street protests in Okinawa were dismissed as the “anti-American movement in Okinawa” and as “anti-state-visit protests [that had] shocked Ike” just before he arrived in South Korea. Once in Seoul, media coverage adopted a different tone. “Ike in good spirits, overwhelmed by zealous South Korean welcome,” blared one headline9 The Okinawa mentioned in South Korean press reports was simply the geographical name of a place that Eisenhower happened to visit on his way to Seoul; it was devoid of significance. Park Chung-hee’s military coup of May 16, 1961 aborted the April Revolution, which became known as the “unfinished revolution.” The Park regime pursued the normalization of Japan-rok relations, Koren troop deployments to Vietnam, and the ratifica- tion of the US-rok Status of Forces Agreement in July 1966—an adjunct to the larger goal of building a US–rok-Japan security alliance. Okinawa’s most direct link to

5 Dong-a Ilbo, “Sasŏl: Aijenhawŏ Midaet’ongnyŏng ŭl hwanyŏng” (Editorial: Seoul Wel- comes US President Eisenhower), June 19, 1960. 6 Dong-a Ilbo, “Kongsanjuŭija ka chiryŏng” (Directives by the Communists), June 17, 1960. 7 Dong-a Ilbo, “Sŏgu sŏdo silmang” (The West Also Loses Hope), June 18, 1960. 8 Dong-a Ilbo, “Sŏgu sŏdo silmang” (The West Also Loses Hope), June 18, 1960. 9 Dong-a Ilbo, “Sŏul ŭi aik’ŭ myŏngnanghan p’yojŏng”(“Ike” in Good Spirits in Seoul), June 20, 1960.

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Korean politics of the 1960s was the transfer of rok troops to Vietnam from US military bases in Okinawa. South Korea’s strong commitment to a tripartiite alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea is evident in Park Chung-hee’s promise to Washington in April 1969. “Regardless of what happens to Okinawa,” he told the Amerians, “we are willing to offer Jeju Island as a site for new US bases.”10 It was not until the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, however, that “Okinawa” would resur- face as a place name in public discourse. The overwhelming surge of pro-US sentiment expressed by the tens of thousands of Koreans who had welcomed an American president in 1960 would never be repeated. Several scholarly studies on South Korea–Okinawa relations were published in these early years. In the field of history, the word Yugu was used when discribing the historical relationship between the Chosŏn Dynasty and the Ryūkyū Kingdom (Yugu) in papers by Yi Hyon-jong on trade and the movements of people in Southeast Asia.11 Yi’s essay examines the relationship between Southeast Asian states and the Korean Peninsula, pointing out that goods native to Southeast Asia, such as pepper, were first brought to the Korean Peninsula via the Ryūkyū Kingdom. Other studies traced the repatriation of Korean “castaways” (p’yoryumin in Korean, hyōryūmin in Japanese: “castaways,” “uprooted people”) and trade between Yugu and Korea during the late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn periods (14th century), noting that Japan at times intervened to obstruct that budding relationship. These papers discuss the repatriation of p’yoryumin, arguing that in the early modern era, it was also, to some extent, a means of trade. In South Korean historiography of the 1960s, the history of Okinawa meant the history of Yugu (Ryūkyū Kingdom) and its relationship with the Chosŏn state. These studies focused mostly on early Chosŏn between 1389 and 1609, the year Yugu was invaded by the Satsuma Domain in Kyushu and lost its independence. The year 1389 is said to have marked the beginning of bilateral ties between the two kingdoms. Relations began when Yugu repatriated to Koryŏ shipwrecked Koreans and others who had been kidnapped and taken to the Ryūkyūs. In folklore studies, a paper on the similarities and dissemination of kinship struc- tures in South Korea and Yugu by Choi Jae-seok12 attempted to confirm the relation between Korea’s munjung (門中), a patrilineal descent group with a common ancestor, and the mun-chuu (門中) kinship group in Yugu through a field survey (December 26, 1968 to January 18, 1969). It was difficult for South Koreans to go abroad in the late

10 President Park Chung-hee’s “Public Comment” of late 1969 is on record (see US Senate, US Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, pp. 1662–63). This was one of the ac- tions driven by President Park’s by fear of US base reductions following the reversion of Okinawa to Japan, which was seen as increasing the threat from North Korea. See Moon, Sex Among Allies. 11 Yi, “Namyang chegugin ŭi naewang muyŏge taehayŏ.” 12 Choi, Han’gug ŭi ch’injok chiptan’gwa yugu ŭi ch’injok chiptan.

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1960s, but Choi completed his survey and concluded that Yugu’s mun-chuu groups had in fact spread from southern Korea to the Ryūkyūs. As far as I know, these are the earliest South Korean studies on the history of the Ryūkyū Kingdom (Yugu). Unlike the 1960’s media coverage of “Okinawa,” which failed to note any connection between Okinawa and South Korea, these pioneering studies explored the historical relationship between the Ryūkyū and Chosŏn kingdoms from the 14th to the early 17th centuries. This period marked the discovery of Yugu and the beginning of Okinawan studies. Significantly, Okinawan studies emerged from the fields of historiography and folklore studies, areas of inquiry that had been suppressed by Japan during the colonial era but that now developed within the framework of “national studies,” which aimed to decolonize scholarship in post-liberation South Korea. To put this in context, during the 1950s, which saw the outbreak of the Korean War and the rise of a military dictatorship in South Korea, it was virtually impossible for Koreans to conduct field research in Okinawa. That effort would have to await the end of authoritarian governance and the democratization movement of the late 1980s. Moreover, as Ch’oe In-t’aek has pointed out, under such social and political constraints, field methodology could not develop normally, prevenrting researchers from adopting interdisciplinary approaches to a particular field of study. Instead, academics turned to theories of origins, diffusion, and the distribution of cultures. The lack of intellectual freedom in South Korea made both Japanese and Okinawan studies exceedingly difficult.13 Historical studies, predicated on overseas field research, would not come into their own until the 1990s. Until then, historical research was undertaken sporadically and relied heavily on Chosŏn-period documents, such as the Annals of the Chosŏn Period (Chosŏn wangjo sillok) and the Record of the Countries East of the Sea (Haedong chegukki). In the field of Korean folklore, scholars studying in Japan were able to conduct field research in Okinawa as members of Japanese survey teams, but their interests in Oki- nawa tended to reflect those of the Japanese specialists they studied under. In the 1960s, under the influene of Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), folklore studies in Japan turned Okinawa into a “training ground” for young ethnologists, giving rise to a second “Yanagita Kunio boom” in the 1970s as the researchers moved into university teaching positions. Murai Osamu has criticized the “Okinawa” discovered by Yanagita Kunio as “a mirror of [his idea of a] proto-Japan.” The Nantō ideology—Okinawa as the “Southern Islands” (Nantō)—was arrived at by design to provide subtle evidence of the heterogeneity needed to reinforce the notion of a homogenenous Japan. If Okinawa was the origin of Yanagita’s politically contrived ideology, which conveniently skirted the issues of colonialism and ethnic supremacy, his direct support for the annexation

13 Ch’oe, “Kankoku ni okeru Okinawa kenkyu no genjo to kadai,” p. 227. Ch’oe’s paper is a great resource that introduces early studies in folklore studies.

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300845 468 Appendix of Korea in pursuit of a unitary Japan and Japanese people confirmed its usefulness as a prop in the ethnologist’s vision of a politically and militarily dominant ethnic state. This was the Okinawa to which South Korean scholars were introduced in the 1960s.14

1.2 The 1970s: Military Dictatorship and Folklore Studies

The late development and stagnation of [Korean folklore studies] can certainly be blamed on the unfortunate fate that just when Korean society was opening up to Western civilization, [our country] was subjugated by the Japanese Empire. However it is also true that [folklore studies] had lagged behind other disciplines, such as law, ethics, natural sciences, history, Korean literature… . Now we are in need of Korean studies more than ever, and because we strongly believe that the essence of folk culture cannot be understood without folklore research, we aspiring folklorists hereby inaugurate [the journal] Han’guk minsokhak [Ko- rean Folklore Studies].15

These were the sentiments the Korean Folklore Society (Han’guk Minsok Hakhoe) chair Im Tong-gwon, expressed in the 1969 inaugural issue of Korean Folklore Studies, the first journal of its kind in the post-liberation era. The 1970s was a decade of struggle against military dictatorship, and with the storm clouds of the 1965 rok–Japan normalization treaty casting a pall over bilateral relations, South Korean scholars awoke to the allure of Korean ethnicity and tradition. That was the backdrop against which Ko- rean folklore developed as part of the so-called Korean Studies Movement, which, ironically, was partially subsidized by the government.16 Between 1970 and 1979, Oki- nawan studies in South Korea advanced as folklore studies flourished, ushering in the second phase of Okinawan research. Here we need to take a step back and examine the roots of post-liberation folklore. From its inception in the 1950s, folklore research defined itself in opposition to the Japanese branch, which was regarded with considerable resentment and animosity. Since 1919, the year the Korean March 1st movement challenged Japanese rule head-on, the colonial administration had promoted folklore surveys as part of its “cultural

14 Murai, Nantō ideorogī no hassei. 15 Im, “Ch’anggansa,” pp. 1–2. 16 One branch of Korean folklore studies developed as Korean Studies (韓国学). Under its influence, the democratization movement incorporated elements of folk culture, such as costumes, songs, and art, to raise people’s consciousness in resisting the dictatorship and US foreign policy. This is an important difference that distinguishes Korean folklore studies from the Japanese discipline. Korean folklore research functioned as a discourse of resistance to state violence aiming to liberate the country from abusive state power. A typical example is the Madang Street Theater that satirically critiqued the national politics of that period via a traditional art form.

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policy” for strengthening Japanese domination by means other than brute force. Ko- rean folklorists are resentful of the fact that materials collected extensively by Japa- nese scholars for the Governor-General of Korea (Chōsen Sōtokufu) were used to help implement colonial policies. Criticizing colonial scholarship and identifying a distinc- tively Korean national ethos were a means of combatting the so-called colonial situation that folklore studies deplored.17 Korean folklore specialists were intent on identifying a long-suppressed “distinct Korean identity” and defining “the root culture” that could redress the distorted inter- pretations of Korean history promoted by the Japanese colonial regime. Thus, Korean shamanism and local oral traditions became the main focus of academic inquiry. In the late 1950s, however, the the Syngman Rhee government tried to suppress this in- tetest as part of its program of eradicating superstition and advancing national modernization. The fall of the Rhree regime in 1960 opened the way for new folklore research With the inauguration of Korean Folklore Studies in 1969 and the unprecedented level of public interest in Korean Studies that emerged in the 1970s, the South Korean Folklore Society and the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology (Kankoku Munhwa Illyuhakhoe) conducted a government-funded Nationwide Survey of Folk Customs. This achievement was instrumental in furthering the development of the discipline. In the face of the Saemaul (“New Village”) Movement promoted by the Park administration in the 1970s, the collecting and organizing of information on “residual culture” by folklorists took on new urgency. Contrary to the folklorists, who viewed the country's villages as “the roots of Korean culture,” the Saemaul Movement concentrated on local community development. The villages, it believed, needed to be reformed, the old society uprooted, and modern ways of life introduced.18 Im Tong-gwon was one of the first Korean scholars to publish on Okinawa. In his 1976 paper “Korea-Ryūkyū Cultural Exchanges and Folklore,” he argues along the same lines as the Korean folklorists of the 1960s that the identification of Okinawa as Yugu shed light on the Ryūkyūs as one of the areas to which Korean traditional culture had diffused. In 1975, Im was invited by the Japan Folklore Society (Nihon Minzoku Gakkai) to conduct an eight-day field study in Japan. He found similarities between Yugu (Ryūkyūan) and Korean cultures, citing as examples Okinawan pigsties, the Bridge of Nations Bell (Bankoku shinryō no kane) in Naha (epilogue), Koryŏ-style roof tiles (Kōrai-gawara), traditional clothing, and the Okinawan kinship term mun-chuu. He based some of his inferences on ancient documents, such as the Records of Korean

17 Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan. Kankoku no minzoku gaku, Nihon no minzoku gaku: 2004 nendo kokuritsu rekishi minzoku hakubutsukan kokusai kenkyū shūkai, p. 14. 18 Han’guk Minsok Hakhoe (Korean Folklore Society). Han’guk minsokhak ŭi ihae, Seoul: Munhak Academy, pp. 34–41. Ch’oe, “Han’guk Okinawa ŭi mingan sinang kwa sesi p’ungsok,” pp. 316–17.

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Castaways (P’yoryugi) of the Chosŏn period. Im concluded that “there is a high prob- ability that Korean culture spread to Yugu,” which, he argued, represented the “southern extent” of Korean cultural dissemination.19 Until the mid-1970s, a South Korean government permit was required to travel abroad even to participate in short international exchange programs. When considering Okinawan studies in South Korea, it is also necessary to examine the works of Ko- rean ethnologists studying in Japan, especially those writing in publications accessible to most South Korean readers. Ch’oe Kil-sung, who received his doctorate in Japan, conducted field research in Okinawa the year following reversion. Between 1973 and 1975, Ch’oe visited Okinawa three times as part of a joint study that was supported by research grants from the Southern Japan Cultural Research Institute (Minami Nihon Bunka Kenkyūjo), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and Seijō University (Tokyo). With South Korean readers in mind, he described his field research in Okina- wa as follows.

Even now, after the reversion of Okinawa, Okinawans seem to carry a strong sense of inferiority as well as [a spirit of] defiance towards Japanese (or as the mainland Japanese are called, Yamatunchu). This sentiment was evident in recent demonstrations during the Crown Prince [Akihiko]’s [1975] visit to Okina- wa. Okinawan people have shown a defiant attitude to mainland scholars, but I felt the informants I interacted with were more open to me as a South Korean. In this respect, South Korean scholars enjoy a slight advantage over their Japanese colleagues in conducting fieldwork in Okinawa.20

What exactly made Ch’oe feel that the informants he interacted with were more open to him as a South Korean academic? At a time of uncertaintly over the future of post-reversion Okinawa, the 1945 massacre of 22 Kumejima islanders by the Japanese army, among them seven members of a family whose father was a Korean resident married to a local woman, came to light. The Korean family’s offense was to have eaten American military rations that had washed ashore. Reports of this incident were carried in both South Korean and Okinawan newspapers. In Okinawa, they sparked a major public outcry. Since 1969, a grassroots movement had been repatriating the remains of Koreans killed in the Okinawan war.21 Kim Dong-seon, while working at a US base in Okinawa, tried to locate relatives of the Korean man killed on Kumejima by posting an ad in the South

19 Im, “Han-Ryu kyoryu wa minsok.” 20 Ch’oe, “Okinawa wa syamŏn e kwanhaesŏ,” p. 28. 21 Mumo, “Mō hitotsu no Okinawa.”

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Korean daily Dong-a Ilbo.22 In 1972, the first public appearance of former Master Ser- geant Kayama Tadashi, the Japanese army leader on Kumejima who had ordered the massacres and carried out some of the killings himself, reverberated throughout Okina- wa. During his appearance, Kayama stated he had acted to protect the army, expressed his continuing pride in the Japanese military, and justified the killings as rightful punishment. Ch’oe Kil-sung’s sense that “the informants I interacted with were more open to me as a South Korean scholar” was a product of this social climate. The defiance felt by many Okinawans toward mainland Japanese was not abstract. Okinawan memories of the Kumejima murders did not belong to a distant past, but had resurfaced at the moment of Okinawa’s reunion with Japan. It was those horrific memories, rekindled by former Master Sergeant Kayama Tadashi’s unrepentant public comments, that fueled the protests during the Japanese Crown Prince’s visit to Okinawa. The image of a massacred Korean and his family was no longer a past event, or even limited to Koreans. This remembrance encapsulated in its rawest form the anxieties felt by Okinawans in 1972, the year of Okinawa’s return to Japan with US military bases fully intact.23 The year 1975, when Ch’oe made his third Okinawan visit, also coincided with a heavy-handed push by the Park regime to create a memorial dedicated to South Kore- ans who died in the Battle of Okinawa. Park’s authoritarian governance was at its ze- nith, and intellectuals could be arrested and jailed without warrants. The government was also under fire from the public for its policy of dispatching South Korean troops to help US forces in Vietnam, who were on the verge of defeat. The six Chinese characters for “Korean Memorial Tower” (韓国人慰霊塔) that were inscribed on the stone cenotaph erected in Okinawa in memory of the Korean war dead were penned in Park Chung-hee’s own hand. (During the Asia-Pacific War, Park had been a lieutenant in the Manchukuo Imperial Army, which operated under Japanese control.) At the request of the Okinawan branch of the Korean Residents’ Union in Japan (Mindan), his government lent its full support to the monument, which was unveiled on February 26, 1975. In October 1975, former Korean comfort woman Bae Pong-gi (1914–1991) was found to still be living in Okinawa. In South Korea, her story did not draw as much attention

22 Okinawa Times. “Kikoku no hi o matsu ikotsu: Chōsen shusshin no Tanikawa-san ikka: Kumejima” (Ashes of the dead await repatriation: Korean-born Tanikawa-san and his family, from Kumejima), June 22, 1969. The remains were finally returned to relatives in Busan in February 1977. 23 In folklorist Ch’oe’s view, Okinawan studies, which the Japanese government and scholars had promoted in the early the 1970s. was “not a purely academic pursuit but was also in- tended to give Okinawans pride in their own culture,” and “enhance mutual understanding between mainland Japanese and the people of Okinawa.” Ch’oe, “Okinawa wa syamŏn e kwanhaesŏ,” p. 28.

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300845 472 Appendix as the Okinawan war memorial because Bae was associated with the pro-North Ch’ongryŏn (General Association of Korean Residents in Japan), which had supported her in her efforts to remain in Okinawa despite the lack of a resident’s permit. Park Chung-hee’s heavy investment in the monument to Korean labor conscripts was a way of competing with Ch’ongryŏn, which was working to uncover the truth about forced wartime labor mobilization in Okinawa. The memorial itself thus embodies the structure of the Cold War that has defined the Korean Peninsula since the creation there of two rival states in 1948.24 How did Ch’oe, who characterized the Japanese government’s involvement in Oki- nawa as “policy driven,” regard his own government’s involvement in the Okinawan memorial? For the Park regime, the Korean monument was a political gesture that went beyond simply memorializing Koreans killed in Okinawa; it became a “performance” that could be politically exploited by playing on the survivors' sentiment of historical aggrievement (han). It must have been difficult, however, for intellectuals to criticize the act of erecting the memorial itself, since many victim-survivors were still alive. Moreover, calling the monument a political performance would not have gone over well with either the public or the survivors. Oddly enough, judging from their writ- ings, the folklorists of the 1970s did not appear to be particularly bothered by the series of “inconvenient” developments that occurred at this time in relation to Okinawa. Subsequently, at an international symposium held in Okinawa in 1982 on the tenth anniversary of reversion, Ch’oe made the following statement:

Okinawa, which for a long time was a kingdom under Chinese protection, became a US occupied territory after World War II, and on May 15, 1972, it was “returned to Japan.” The term, “reversion to Japan” suggests that Okinawa originally belonged to Japan. Some aspects [of Okinawan society], such as race, language, and culture are Japanese, but Okinawa is an island deeply rooted in the region it occupies. It is very much a foreign land to South Koreans. Some political and diplomatic relationships between [South Korea and Okinawa] did exist in the past, but not to the extent of deeply embedding each state in the other’s history. Culturally, as well, Okinawa is a foreign place. When it comes to folkways, however, many common traits can be found with South Korea.25

Ch’oe’s brief outline of Okinawan history covered the Ryūkyū Kingdom, Okinawa’s in- corporation into Japan, its subordination to US military government after World War ii, and its “reversion” to Japan, but the battle of Okinawa escapes his notice. To Ch’oe, the

24 Shin, “Han’guk kŭnhyŏndaesa wa Okinawa: Sanghŭn kwa kiŏk ŭi yŏnsok kwa tanjŏl,” p. 147. 25 Ch’oe, “Han-Ryu minsok pigyo rŭl wihan sigak,” 25.

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appeal of Okinawan studies had nothing to do with memories of the battlefield, but centers on the folk traits Okinawan culture shares with South Korea. Needless to say, folklorists were drawn to Okinawa because of cultural elements that had become extinct in Korea but could still be observed in everyday life in the Ryūkyūs.26 They also posited that many of South Korea’s lost folkways could be recov- ered or reconstructed by analyzing existing Okinawan folk practices.27 After the 1970s, South Korean folklore research had settled on a hypothesis that would become one of the pillars of Okinawan studies: Okinawa is a “mirror that reflects proto-Korean folkways.” Thus, the people who actually embody and animate Okinawan folklore, Oki- nawans themselves, were reduced to supporting actors in an ancient Korean folk pa- gent. Seated behind the mirror, their presence was not reflected in the glass. In short, Okinawans were being relegated to the bleachers as passive spectators. By the 1980s, South Korean studies of Okinawa had refocused on folk beliefs, Okinawan yuta shamanism, and annual ritual and festive events in an effort to discover new connections with the folklore of antiquity, one that no longer existed in South Korea.

1.3 The 1980s and early 1990s: “Yugu,” “Okinawa,” and “Japan Studies” The third period under consideration begins in the 1980, with the Gwangju Uprising of May 18 and the ensuing massacre of demonstrators by the rok army, and concludes with the establishment of the May 18 Memorial Park and Monument in Gwangju in 1997. In South Korean Okinawan studies, anti-US narratives in Okinawa and anti-Ja- pan narratives in South Korea became entangled during the 15 years from May 1980 to May 1995, a period that saw the “institutionalization of collective memory,” in which the state “sanctified” the memory of Koreans massacred by other Koreans. What happened in Gwangju in 1980 was not unrelated to Okinawa. On May 23, 1980, the Ameri- can commander of the US-Korea Joint Command approved a rok military request to deploy the South Korean 20th Infantry Division to Gwangju from the Demilitarized Zone. That decision unleashed elite Black Beret paratroopers on the students and citizens of Gwangju, and many students were killed. At the request of the commanding general of rok forces, the American navy diverted an aircraft carrier, the uss Coral Sea, from the Philippines and sent two naval vessels from Okinawa to the Korean Pen- insula to monitor Korean air space.28 The 1980s was a decade of anti-government protests aiming to “overthrow military dictatorship.” Demands for democratic reform went hand-in-hand with anti-American slogans, such as “down with Imperialism” and “Yankee go home.” Some university students went to extremes, setting themselves on fire and jumping off of buildings. Under

26 Ch’oe, Han’guk Okinawa ŭi mingan sinang kwa sesi p’ungsok, 129. 27 Ch’oe, Han’guk Okinawa ŭi mingan sinang kwa sesi p’ungsok, p. 161. 28 Moon, Ushinawareta kioku o motomete, p. 86.

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300845 474 Appendix the 1948 National Security Act, countless arrests were made, and police torture was routine, resulting in numerous unexplained deaths. In June 1987, another popular uprising occurred, forcing President Chun Doo-hwan, the general who had ordered the suppression of Gwangju, to hold direct presidential elections and restore civil liberties. The so-called June Revolution finally opened the way for the democratization of South Korea. That year, the citizenry elected their own president, and serious democratic re- forms were begun. Under the duely elected government of Roh Tae-woo, the “Special Act on the May Democratization Movement” was enacted. The consecration of Gwangju as sacred ground began in earnest in 1995. In Okinawa in the early 1980s, the Japanese government began a full-scale development scheme, the Second Okinawa Promotion and Development Plan (1982). Formu- lated on the tenth anniversary of reversion, the plan was integral to assuring the conditions for an ongoing US military presence. In 1995, the Cornerstone of Peace was unveiled at the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum in Itoman at the southern tip of the main island. Ironically, that event marked the extension of government control over the commemoration and remembrance of the Battle of Okinawa in the form of what officials called “peace administration” (heiwa gyōsei). Under government aegis, memory was "institutionalized" in South Korea and Oki- nawa to memorialize democratization in the former instance and peace in the latter. This meant that the inherently criminal behavior of the state actor itself could not be pursued legally, leaving issues of colonialism, military aggression, and other forms of state violence unresolved.29 The national power structure was in effect memorializing the people it had killed through its exercise of state, police, and military violence. It was the 1982 Japanese textbook controversy that finally brought the festering problems of colonialism to a head.30

29 On the problematic process of the institutionalization of memory, Moon Pu-sik poses an important question. Moon’s arson attack on the United States Information Service’s Busan office in 1982 exposed American involvement in the South Korean government’s crackdown on the Gwangju movement. He was charged with espionage and imprisoned for almost seven years. Moon was critical of the state-lead sanctification of Gwangju. Moon wrote, “Memories that have been made sacred are no longer threatening [to the state]. Also, in the process of such elevation, the actual memories themselves are actively erased.” (Moon, Ushinawareta kioku o motomete, p. 112). Tomiyama Ichirō reflects on Moon’s critique in the essay below—which is a must-read together with Moon’s writing. Tomiyama “Uragirareta kibō, arui wa kibō ni tsuite.” 30 On the 1982 textbook controversy, see Jeong, Nikkan kankei ni okeru rekishi ninshiki mondai no hanpuku. Here, Jeong Keunju analyses the transitition from the once dominant anti-Japan narrative to one that stressed surpassing Japan. He makes an important contri- bution to our understanding of how South Korean society dealt with internal colonialism in 1982.

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Until the late 1970s, South Korean historiography had treated Japanese history as a part of Asian history, which was dominated by China. Scholars of Japanese history were rare, and only a few university history departments offered courses in the history of Japan. The majority of academic papers on that topic dealt with ancient Korea-Japan relations, and as Yi Wŏnsun has pointed out, the motivation for studying ancient Japa- nese history arose from Korean academics’ own historical consciousness: such scholars sought to erase the dark chapter of Japanese occupation and colonial domination. By returning to a premodern past, they hoped to affirm the cultural superiority and political acumen of the “Han race.”31 However, the 1982 Japanese textbook controversy triggered a renewed interest in Japan studies among South Korean historians. This newfound attraction eventually lead to the budding of Okinawan studies in South Korean historiography in the 1990s. There had been virtually no research on Okinawa in the 1980s, with the exception of a paper by Yi Hyon-jong, which looked at the Ryūkyūs in the context of trade flows and the movement of people in Southeast Asia, continuing the work of the 1960s.32 Oki- nawan studies became a subset of the early modern history of Korea–Japan relations, i.e., a speciality area, when the history of Korea–Japan relations and Korea–Japan cultural history became legitimate pursuits in the 1990s. Discovered in the 1960s, “Yugu,” was now studied systematically in the 1990s, focusing mainly on the history of the Ryūkyū Kingdom and the 300-year history of Korea–Ryūkyū relations. Research topics included trade, the exchange of culture and goods, and the repatriation of castaways and abductees (p’yoryumin).33

31 See Yi, Kankoku kara mita Nihon no kyōiku, pp. 259–64. In 1994, at the time of its publica- tion, Yi Wŏnsun was the head of the National History Compilation Committee (Kuksa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe)—since 2000, the National Institute of Korean History—and took a keen interest in the history of Chosŏn-Ryūkyū relations. During this period, a body of works on Chosŏn-Ryūkyū relations was included in books published by the committee. Yi also accompanied the first team of South Korean historians to conduct field research in Okinawa in 1996. 32 Yi, “Yugu Namman kwangye.” 33 According to past historical studies on Okinawa, the Korea-Ryūkyū diplomatic relationship is believed to have started with Yugu’s return of castaways in 1389—the 1st year of King Chang (late Koryŏ), as recorded in the ancient Korean document, History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa). In fact, however, from the Chosŏn period, emissaries of the Ryūkyū king traveled frequently to the Korean Peninsula. According to the Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok), relations between the Chosŏn and Ryūkyū courts began one month after the birth of Chosŏn in the eighth month of 1392. Furthermore, the bilateral diplomatic relationship lasted 108 years, from 1392 until 1500, and continued via Ming China after Chosŏn was invaded by Japan in 1592 (Imjin War), and even after the Ryūkyū Kingdom was invaded by the Satsuma domain in 1609, as indicated in the Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty and the Collection of Diplomatic Documents of the Ryūkyū Kingdom (Reki- dai Hoan). With the collapse of the Ming tributary state system brought about by rise of

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From the 1990s onwards, research on Korea–Ryūkyū relations was funded by grants awarded for Korean history, and research papers were published mainly in the Occa- sional Papers of the National Institute of History (Kuksagwan nonch’ong) and the History of Korea (Han’guksa) series published by the Committee for the Compilation of Na- tional History (Kuksa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe). Lee Chan (1992, 1995) studied six maps in the Chronicles of Countries in the Eastern Sea (Haedong chegukki) compiled by Sin Sukchu at the command of the Ryūkyū king in 1471 (2nd year of Seongjong). Included in this series are the “Map of Japan Proper” (Ilbon ponguk Chido) and the “Map of the Ryūkyū Kingdom" (Yuguguk Chido). The “Map of Japan” is said to be the oldest map of Japan in print, and even in the world. The maps of the Tsushima and Iki islands are especially detailed for security reasons “involving Wa [Japanese] aggression.” Japanese place names are written using Chinese characters that replicate Japanese pronunciation, suggesting that the charts were based on direct field surveys. The “Map of the Ryūkyū Kingdom” (Yuguguk Chido) and the “Map of Japan Proper” were first brought to Korea by the Japanese teamaster Sen Doan (1546–1607), who had made several visits to Korea as an envoy of the Ryūkyū king. The Ryūkyū map (Yuguguk Chido) indicates around 20 islands in the vicinity of the Okinawan main island. It includes such details as distance and the extent of human habitation and is said to have been highly prized by the Ryūkyū Court. These topographical charts were included in the History of Korea (Han’guksa) as part of a larger projet to compile an annotated world map in the first half of the Chosŏn period.34 Yang Suji’s 1993 dissertation “A Study of Chosŏn and Yugu Relations: Focusing on the Early Chosŏn Dynasty, 1389–1638”35 marks the beginning of the consistent use of Yugu in historical studies. In the context of Korea-Ryūkyū relations, Ha Woo-bong notes that while The Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok) are a rich source of historical materials, “very few studies on Ryūkyū–Korea relations have been undertaken in South Korea.”

the Qing state in 1644, Chosŏn-Ryūkyū relations came to an end. The commonly accepted year for the demise of bilateral ties is 1695, when the Ryūkyū Kingdom returned Korean castaways via the Qing Court without an exchange of diplomatic papers between the Chosŏn and Ryūkyū courts. It was most likely during the Chosŏn period that the Ryūkyū Kingdom entered into diplomatic relations with Chosŏn based on the latter’s friendly- neighbor policy. Yugu was no longer perceived as a mythical realm of antiquity. The Ryūkyū Kingdom maintained relations with the Korean Peninsula for over 300 years. 34 Lee, “Haedong chegukki,” pp. 1–8, and Lee, “4. Chiriji ŭi p’yŏnch’an’gwa chido ŭi chŏngch’aek (3) segyejido chŏngch’aek”pp. 205–308. 35 Yang, “Chosŏn-Yugu kwan’gye yŏn’gu.”

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He has appealed for more scholarly attention to this “unexplored field,” where “there are so many issues to be broached and analyzed.” In particular, Ha makes the case for the necessity of studies from a South Korean perspective. “The studies of Korea– Ryūkyū relations by Japanese scholars are limited, both in terms of the degree of researcher engagement and scholarly perspectives, which that do not coincide [with ours].”36 Ha found a particularly large “engagement gap” in his own area of research, castaways and captives. Most of the Ryūkyū Kingdom’s diplomatic documents were destroyed in 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa, but Yi Wŏnsun has managed to analyze Korea–Ryūkyū relations in the first half of the Chosŏn period using 18 diplomatic records from those parts of the Collection of Diplomatic Documents of the Ryūkyū Kingdom (Rekidai Hoan) that survived the war. He did this by cross-referencing them with the Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok). The following is an excerpt from Yi’s study.

Among the Koreans captured and taken away to different places, amid much pain and hardship, the twists of fate led some to be resold to Ryūkyū. Our ances- tors who were violently abducted and taken to the faraway land of the Ryūkyū Kingdom had to endure the pain of dispossession and torture, and it was not until the very end of the Koryŏ Dynasty that they were repatriated to their homeland through diplomatic channels arranged by the Ryūkyū Kingdom. 37

South Korean historians found that what Japanese students of regional or maritime history had described as “human interactions” (hitoteki kōryū) or “movements of people” (hito no idō) to be in fact the abduction of Korean hostages for ransom by the waegu (Jp. wakō) pirates, who had been active since the 14th century. The Japanese folklorist perspective was unacceptable. The South Korean researchers who looked to Okinawa for clues to a “proto-Korean folk tradition” lost during the colonial era, however, had nothing to say about the findings and methodology of earlier Japanese folklore research. While Japanese folklore studies of the 1960s uncritically embraced Okinawa as a field of inquiry, South Korean historians, by contrast, were wary of the work of these scholars, particularly as it pertained to the p’yoryumin castaways and hostages. That critical regard distanced South Korean historians from their folklorist compatriots. Previous Japanese historical studies had characterized the experiences of the hyōryūmin as “exchanges among people” (hito o meguru kōryū), romanticizing and distorting historical reality. In fact the hyōryūmi/p’yoryumin had been “robbed by

36 Ha, “Chosŏn chŏngi ŭi tae-Yugu kwangye,” pp. 135–36. 37 Yi, “Yoktae Poan ŭl t’onghaesŏ pon Chosŏn chŏn’gi ŭi Cho Yu kwan’gye,” p. 7.

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Korean or Chinese pirates, abducted and held as hostages, and repatriated only after narrowly escaping death.”38 South Korean studies of the p’yoryumin who ended up in “Ryūkyū” in the fourteenth century provide historical context by citing their accounts of abduction and repatriation and examining what they actually observed and experienced while in Okinawa.39 Ironically, historians generally have not examined the historical issues raised by the military comfort women (ianfu), who were systematically rounded up and taken by force to Okinawa in the mid-20th century as a matter of Japanese state policy. Nor have those scholars shown serious interest in the Korean laborers who were forcibly mobilized as military auxiliaries (gunpu), some of whom later returned to their country after close scrapes with death. These are compelling contemporary issues, not ancient history, and they concern Korea–Okinawa relations in our own lifetimes. South Korean historians, however, continue to confine their gaze to Chosŏn–Ryūkyū relations—the precursor of today’s neighborly relations. In their view, the only Koreans carried off to Okinawa by force and worthy of historical note are those who traversed the waters of antiquity indicated in the “Yuguguk Chido,” the Chosŏn Dynasty map of the Ryūkyūs.

2 Han Crosses the Ocean: Okinawa and Forcibly Mobilized Koreans

Yun Chŏng-ok was the first researcher to trace the trajectories of Korean comfort women who survived the Battle of Okinawa. She visited Okinawa twice and met former comfort woman Bae Pong-gi, who did not return to Korea after the war. The first visit was immediately after the 1980 Gwangju uprising. The second trip was in 1988, by which time regime change in South Korea had been consolidated, and a criminal in- vestigation of the Gwangju massacre was underway.

The people I met in Okinawa did not have good feelings toward Japan. They still harbored suspicion and a sense of humiliation stemming from betrayal by the Japanese army immediately after the war. Perhaps it was because of these emo- tions that they said they felt friendly toward me, a Korean, and rather sympa- thetic to Korean comfort women and military conscripts. They were also interested in the student protests and human-rights activism that was gathering

38 Min et al., “Han-Il kan p’yoryumin e kwanhan yŏn’gu,” p. 65. 39 Yi Hun’s study, which was also published in Japanese, is based on a detailed examination of primary sources, and stands as the culmination of earlier historical work on the p’yoryumin (Ja. hyōryūmin). Yi, Chosŏn hugi p’yoryumin kwa Han-Il kwangye, Japanese edition Kankoku no gakujutsu to bunka 27.

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momentum in South Korea then. There were young Okinawans who dreamed of independence.40

In her informants’ display of compassion toward Korean comfort women and conscripts, Yun was able to detect an underlying sense of betrayal at the Japanese military’s treatment of Okinawans. She saw a connection between those feelings of bitter- ness and the positive attitude of respondents toward her as a Korean. Yun was the first scholar to reveal to the South Korean public the existence of Okinawan memories of abandonment and treachery by the army, and of the Korean ghosts who continue to haunt Okinawan sites of remembrance today.

Thoughts were going through my mind as I left the house of Halmoni [“Grand- mother,” i.e., Bae Pong-gi]. Perhaps Halmoni does not have such fond memories of her homeland. But could she possibly have found better memories here? Then I thought of Harue [a comfort woman in Tokashiki who died in the Battle of Okinawa]. She was said to have wandered like a ghost after the war. I pondered the idea of their earthly remains coming to rest at the Hill of National Com- memoration [National Mang-Hyang Cemetary] in South Korea [where Koreans who died abroad are memorialized].41

“I ask you to consider having the remains of the comfort women, whose restless souls have been wandering [in foreign lands] as wŏnhon [寃—the spirits of those who died unjustly], buried at the Hill of National Commemoration… .”42 This was the subtitle of Yun’s final article in the eight-part series she wrote for Han’guk Ilbo in 1981 about her Okinawa field research. As Yun’s comments about Bae Pong-gi and Harue’s ghost sug- gest, she saw Okinawa as a place where former comfort women, rendered invisible to South Korean society, coexisted with both the living and the dead. At the time of Yun’s visit in 1981, Bae Pong-gi was the only comfort-woman survivor to have spoken out about her past life. In the post-reversion political turmoil, she was virtually forced to come out publically for fear that, as an illegal foreign resident, she would be deported to her homeland if she remained silent. About her meeting with Bae, Yun writes: “Eating together, we talked about many things, right down to the chi- jimi [a kind of pancake] we were sharing, but I left her place without ever mentioning

40 Yun, Heiwa o kikyū shite, p. 23. 41 Yun Chŏng-ok, “Kkeulryeogan saramdeul” (Those who were taken away), no. 8. Han’guk Ilbo, September 3 (1981). 42 Yun Chŏng-ok, “Kkeulryeogan saramdeul” (Those who were taken away), no. 8. Han’guk Ilbo, September 3 (1981).

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300845 480 Appendix the ‘comfort women’”43 Yun avoided the kind of interview that digs for “proof” of an informant’s assertions. Instead, she depicted Bae’s obsession with cleanliness, describing how she washed her hands repeatedly, her belief in superstitions, and, when Yun asked her “Did you forget the Korean language all together?” her reply: “No way, how could I?” Yun described Bae taking out the alien registration card the Japanese government had issued to her to normalize her residence status, which she had carefully wrapped like a treasure, and how she put it back again with great attention after show- ing it. Yun only comment was: “Halmoni could not comprehend why our country had been divided into North and South.” Yun did not attempt to explain the North-South split. But that brief passage reveals her hesitation as an interviewer, and her painful realization that Bae did not recognize the country listed on her registration card as her country of origin, the Republic of Korea. In response to Yun’s thoughtfulness—not asking tenacious questions but striv- ing to imagine Bae’s feelings from their conversations and her daily routine—Bae per- mitted her photo to be taken. It was after talking with Bae that Yun appealed to Korean readers to find a place for her in National Mang-Hyang Cemetary. That wish was never realized. In January 1990, Hankyoreh featured Yun Chŏng-ok’s research in a four-part series entitled “Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan,” which was based partly on her findings in Okinawa. The series attracted a wide readership in South Korea. On October 24, 1991, a bill was submitted in the South Korean National Assembly calling for the establishment of a memorial to victims of the comfort-women system in the Independence Hall of Korea. The legislative docket was full, and the bill was not voted on, but it was the first time the issue of military sexual servitude had been raised in the National Assembly.44 During the early 1990s, following the personal revelations of numerous victim- survivors in South Korea, the comfort-women problem was branded in nationalistic terms as the victimization of “our women.” Paradoxically, Okinawa entered the consciousness of the South Korean public via this issue. Even so, Okinawa registered merely as a place to which mobilized Koreans had been sent during the war. In South Korea, memories of the Okinawan battlefield did not figure in public discourse on the comfort women issue. A memorial for Bae Pong-gi and her companions, the Arirang Commemorative Monument, was finally completed in 1997. It was erected on Tokashiki Island, where

43 Yun Chŏng-ok, “Kkeulryeogan saramdeul” (Those who were taken away), No. 7. Han’guk Ilbo, August 29 (1981). 44 Chŏngshindae munje taechaek e kwanhan ch’ŏngwon ŭigyŏn chisi kŏn (Concerning the pe- tition on measures pertaining to the comfort women issue). Kukhoe ŭisarok (Minutes of the National Assembly of South Korea). Che 156-hoe Monhwa kongbo, Che 8-ch’a (8th Hearing on Public Diplomacy, the 156th National Assembly) October 24, 1991.

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 481 she had been taken, but in South Korea, almost no one knew about the cenotaph (figure 11.1). Yun Chŏng-ok finally realized her long-time wish for a comfort-women memorial by working together with residents on Miyakojima Island at the southern ex- tremity of Okinawa Prefecture. The memorial was proposed by people on Miyakojima who had witnessed and engaged with Korean ianfu there during the war (chapter 9). Completed in 2008, the Memorial to All Comfort Women is the first monument to be established in Okinawa based solely on eyewitness testimonies (figure 11.3, p. 485). Those interviews were collected by the South Korea–Okinawa–Japan Joint Survey of the “Military Comfort Women” Problem, which studied Miyakojima from 2006 to 2007. They were the point of departure for this author’s research, and the present volume is, in a sense, their fruition. In 1986, Korean conscript survivors journeyed back to Okinawa to the place where they had been stationed to honor those who had struggled together and died.45 On November 18, five members of Taiheiyō Dōshikai (Pacific Ocean Comrades Associa- tion), including the chair, Ch’ŏn T’aek-gi; Kwŏn Pyŏng-t’ak, the author of Kerama yŏlto (Kerama Islands); and Unno Fukuju, arrived in Naha to a warm welcome from over 300 people.46 The association had originally been formed as a social group by 275 survivors of the Battle of Okinawa on the transport ship repatriating them to Korea, and was reorganized after the Korean War (chapter 8).47 The objective of the Okinawa trip was “simply to commemorate those who suffered hardship together and died young.”48 The year 1986 was a time of mass protests against US military bases and rising na- tionalism in Japan. The banners unfurled at large demonstrations and rallies in Oki- nawa declared: “Okinawa residents oppose the 20-year lease of confiscated land to US forces,” “Miyakojima citizens object to US military use of private aircraft and civilian airports,” and “Okinawa residents oppose raising the national flag and singing the national anthem in schools.” The first two slogans involved problems of the so-called base economy. Meanwhile, the central and prefectural governments—the Ministry of

45 Okinawa Times.“Yonju-ichinen-buri Okinawa iri: Zamami to Akashima, Okinawa no anbu raitō” (Setting foot on Zamami Island and Akashima after 41 years: Shedding light on the dark history of Okinawa), November 19, 1986. 46 Taketomi Kazuhiko, “Tomo no nemuru chi de shokon: Kyosei renko no ‘Chosenjin gunpu’” (Calling the spirits back to the land where comrades rest in peace: The conscription of Korean military laborers), Okinawa Times, November 19, 1986; Ch’ŏn, Imgyŏng Ch’ŏn T’aek- gi hoegorok hanŭl do ulgo ttang do ulgo, p. 65. See also Unno and Kwŏn. Han: Chōsenjin gunpu no Okinawasen. 47 Ch’ŏn, Imgyŏng Ch’ŏn T’aek-gi hoegorok hanŭl do ulgo ttang do ulgo, p. 42. 48 Taketomi Kazuhiko, “Tomo no nemuru chi de shōkon” (Bitter memories at the graves of our friends). Okinawa Times, November 19, 1986.

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Figure 11.1 The Arirang Commemorative Monument on Tokashiki Island (1997) Source: Hong Yunshin

Figure 11.2 The Han Memorial (Cenotaph of the Aggrieved) in Yomitan village (2006) Source: Hong Yunshin

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 483

Education, Science and Culture (at the time) and the Okinawa Prefectural Board of Education—worked together to foster patriotism. This was the background against which memories of the Battle of Okinawa were being revived. The visit of former Korean conscripts after 41 years created an unrivaled opportunity to remember and talk about the tragic history of the Okinawan war. The media followed them closely for the duration of their visit (November 18–23), and the public response was overwhelming. One of the highlights of the visit was when the former conscripts found the execution ground on Aka Island where seven of their colleagues had been killed 41 years earlier for allegedly stealing food to stay alive. The Okinawa Times reporter wrote, “see- ing these men cry, the islanders, too, were moved to tears.”49 The former comrades presented offerings of dried fish and apples brought from South Korea and conducted a memorial service. In accordance with Confucian rites, spirits were summoned to the execution site, and those assembled commemorated the 40 men from their hometown in Gyeongsang County who died in Okinawa. In place of the ashes of the deceased, they collected soil in a small box made of paulownia wood that they had brought along for that purpose.50 The men wrapped the box in a South Korean flag and took it home with them.51 The souls of the dead had finally returned to their homeland. They were enshrined at the Hyegwangsa Temple in Gyeongsang County, where a monument commemorating the county’s war dead was also built. Professor Arasaki Moriteru and five others from Okinawa and the Japanese mainland traveled to Gyeongsang to attend the unveiling ceremony on April 20, 1987.52 This event took place just before the start of the June Revolution that forced President Chun Doo-hwan from office and consolidated the gains of the democratization movement. Private exchanges like these were happening in many other places as well. Indeed, they had become part of the momentum for a more open society In contrast to the comfort-women memorials, monuments to deceased military auxiliaries were established by dint of the survivors’ strong desire to commemorate their comrades. That determination took them all the way Okinawa. They raised funds in their hometowns and solicited contributions from national lawmakers. Their mo- tives had nothing to do with the Independence Hall of Korea, which was inaugurarted on Korean Independence Day—August 15, 1987, the date 42 years earlier that Korea

49 Taketomi Kazuhiko, “Tomo yo yasurakani nemure: naki dōryō no ‘rei’ sokoku e” (Rest in peace, our friends: taking the “spirits” of our comrades back home), Okinawa Times, No- vember 21, 1986. 50 Unno and Kwŏn, Han: Chōsenjin gunpu no Okinawasen, p. 9. 51 Taketomi Kazuhiko, “Mune no tsukae ga toreta: kyōsei renkō no moto Kankokujin gunpu tachi” (Relief for the pain: Former South Korean conscripts return). Okinawa Times, No- vember 20, 1986. 52 Ch’ŏn, Imgyŏng Ch’ŏn T’aek-gi hoegorok hanŭl do ulgo ttang do ulgo, pp. 95–96.

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300845 484 Appendix had been liberated from Japanese colonial rule. That does not mean, of course, that the former conscripts were immune to anti-Japanese sentiment or the emotional tug of slogans such as “families destroyed by Japanese imperialism” or “the plundering of our people.”53 Exchanges between Okinawan residents and wartime Korean laborers continued, and on May 11, 2006, a monument identical to that erected in Gyeongsang County was built in the village of Yomitan on, Okinawa (see figure 11.2). Commemora- tive events are held each year at the Han Memorial (“Cenotaph of the Aggrieved”). Led by scholars, activists, and civil-society groups in Okinawa and South Korea, comfort-women advocacy and the movements to memorialize the Korean war dead have been a significant factor in the development of Okinawan studies in South Korea. These grassroots initiatives have attempted to address head-on the issues of colonialism and military aggression that academic societies specializing in Okinawan studies have neglected. As the epitaphs engraved on these monuments indicate, these were efforts to articulate memories quite different from those evoked by the Independence Hall of Korea, which was a state project high on the political agenda of Chun Doo- hwan. Among those remembered are women like Bae Pong-gi, who had been left behind in Okinawa after the war, and whose name will never appear beside her male compatriots on the Cornerstone of Peace Monument, neatly grouped by imaginary allegiences to two states, neither of which existed until 1948. In South Korea, however, the names of such women captured the imagination of the public, but only as sym- bolic of Japan's colonial depredations. Okinawa had meaning as a site of wartime forced mobilization and nothing more. This is apparent in the way many South Kore- ans viewed the 1995 rape of a young Okinawan girl by three US servicemen.

Observing the reaction of Japanese people to the rape incident, I wonder about the former Japanese military comfort women who had to live with so much han and spend their remaining years in despair… . Faced with this incident—the rape of a Japanese girl by US servicemen—I urge the people of Japan to recon- sider, from the victims’ perspective, their country’s past aggression and the many wrongs it committed during the period of colonial rule.54

53 Grassroots exchanges between private groups of Okinawans and South Koreans gradually became known publically. On June 6, 1989, South Korean broadcaster mbc aired a docu- mentary entitled “8.15 Liberation Special: ‘The Forgotten Years’” (P’al-ilo Kwangbok t’ŭkchip “Manggak ŭi sewŏl”). The program followed the late Kim Yŏl-gŭn’s widow and elderly son to Okinawa to conduct a memorial service. At the request of the broadcaster, Ch’ŏn T’aek-gi accompanied them as guide. 54 Dong-a Ilbo. “Sŏngp’okhaeng” taeŭng Ilbon ŭi du ŭlgul” (Japan’s duplicity in dealing with “sexual violence”), October 5, 1995.

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 485

Figure 11.3 The Memorial to All Comfort Women, Miyakojima (2008) Source: Hong Yunshin

The reality of comfort-women survivors in Okinawa did not really register with South Koreans. A scholar and researcher on the issue of sexual slavery and former Korean military conscripts visited Okinawa in the 1980s, saw the situation for themselves, and were able to understood the Okinawan people’s feelings of betrayal. For them, it was

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300845 486 Appendix possible to begin building solidarity. But in the narrow confines of the South Korean narrative space, which is constructed by the binary “Japan as aggressor/South Korea as victim,” the shared sentiment around which solidarity can begin to coalesce simply does not yet exist, outside of a small group of peace activists (see below).

3 1996 to the Present: Problems of “Empathy” and “Solidarity”

The last section focuses on the fourth period, from 1996 to the present, and the process by which Okinawa became, in South Korea, a bystander to its own history. Today, the name “Ryūkyū” is generally recognized as designating Okinawa’s recent historical past, including the war, and its heavy burden of US bases. Where does “Yugu” fit in? I turn here to a 1996 state-issued South Korean school textbook that used the term “Ryūkyū.”

Southeast Asian states such as Ryūkyū, Siam, and Jawa sent gift-bearing envoys to the Chosŏn Dynasty in its early period and returned to their countries with Chosŏn products. The exchange of commodities between Korea and Ryūkyū was relatively more robust than others. Through trade in the early Chosŏn period, culturally advanced goods from Chosŏn greatly influenced Japan and Southeast Asian countries. High School National History vol.1, 199655

In 1996, “Ryūkyū” was used to describe Okinawa’s relationship to the Chosŏn Dynasty. Its usage is similar to the way South Korean historians handled Yugu, except that the text is constructed so that readers now see Ryūkyū as part of Southeast Asia.56 The above passage was written the year Korean historians conducted their first field surveys in Okinawa. Those were published in 1999 as Chosŏn and Yugu (Chosŏn kwa Yugu), a comprehensive study of the history of Chosŏn–Ryūkyū relations. As the use of Yugu here suggests, the textbook passage adopts the arguments of historians working in the 1980s and early 1990s, but looks, with some exceptions, at the entire Chosŏn Dynasty, as opposed to preceding studies which limited their scope to the early Chosŏn period. Many notable works were completed at this time, including the Collection of Historical Documents on Chosŏn–Yugu Relations (Chosŏn Yugu kwan’gye saryo chipsŏng), an

55 Kuksa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe. Kodŭnghakkyo Kuksa, Sang, p. 186. 56 The unitary government-issued schoolbook was abolished in 1996 in favor of a system in which each school chooses from among government-certified texts. However, the por- trayal of Chosŏn–Ryūkyū relations remains uniform in all of the textbooks issued between 1996 and 2007, except that a still image of the Chronicles of Countries in the Eastern Sea (Haedong chegukki), compiled by the Chosŏn Dynasty, was added to its 2002 edition. Kuksa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe. Kodŭnghakkyo Kuksa (2002 edition), p. 89.

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 487

assemblage of Ryūkyū-related matrerials published by the Committee for the Compi- lation of National History in 1998. It was probably unrealistic, however, to think that ordinary South Koreans would connect these two terms—“Ryūkyū” in school texts and “Yugu” in academic journals— with “Okinawa,” which the media used extensively after 2004 when discussing the issue of US military bases. The “rebalancing” of US forces to the Asia-Pacific region began that year—the same year a US Air Force helicopter slammed into Okinawa International University, sparking calls for the closure of the nearby US Marine Air Base at Futenma in Ginowan city. At the Korean Folklore Society’s second international conference in August 1997, Ch’oe In-t’aek declared that “Okinawan studies in South Korea are non-existent, a wasteland.” He argued the need for a revitalized Okinawan research program and gave three reasons. First, Okinawa has the potential of developing, in regional comparative studies, a broader four-culture analytical framework for China, South Korea, Japan, and the Ryūkyūs, moving beyond the traditional tripartite model of China, Korea, and Japan. Secondly, the rich and varied nature of Okinawa’s complex island society, he said, highlights the insularity and exlusiveness of Japanese and South Korean societies. Thirdly, based on its wartime and postwar experiences, Okinawa is ideally placed to articulate and draw attention to the US base problem and the search for peace in East Asia and the world.57 Ch’oe In-t’ae’s proposal to use Okinawan studies as a vehicle for resolving the “US base issue” and promoting “world peace” is noteworthy, since prior to 1995, South Ko- rean scholarship had virtually ignored these problems. By 1997, South Korean folklore studies had stagnanted because of their preoccupation with old-school “theories of the origin, distribution, and diffusion of human cultures.”58 His arguments were published in Japanese in 1998 in vol. 4 of the Bulletin of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science and Culture, Kyōritsu Women’s University. (Kyōritsu Joshi Daigaku Sōgō Bunka Kenkyūjo nenpo) [see note 58]. A slightly revised essay was published in Korean in 2000 in vol. 9 of the Korean Journal of Japanology (Ilbon hakbo). In the Ko- rean version, Ch’oe noted the failure of Okinawan studies to progress, even in the 1990s as a new wave of Japan studies was breaking: “Considering its importance in East Asia, Okinawa [still] receives disproportionately less public exposure than mainland Japan.”59 By the end of the 1990s, however, that situation had begun to change. The exchanges that began in 1996 between anti-base activists in Okinawa and South Korea and the articles and books describing their firsthand observations of the US military presence gave a new boost to Okinawan studies in South Korea. Bilateral

57 Ch’oe, “Kankoku ni okeru Okinawa kenkyū no genjō to kadai,” pp. 227–29. 58 Ch’oe, “Han’guk e issŏsŏŭi Okinawa yŏksa yŏngu ŭi kwaje wa chŏnmang,” p. 298. 59 Ch’oe, “Han’guk e issŏsŏŭi Okinawa yŏksa yŏngu ŭi kwaje wa chŏnmang,” p. 310.

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anti-base networking culminated in massive protests at the G8 Summit held in Oki- nawa in 2000. Large numbers united in opposition to the bases, raised the banner, “Ex- pose ‘security’ policies that threaten life, livelihoods, and human dignity. Provide human security that protects the dignity of life.”60 Arasaki Moriteru worked closely with South Korean anti-base activists, some of whom introduced two of his representative works to South Koreans.61 Both books are considered essential reading in current Okinawan studies, which examine contemporary history from the perspective of Okinawa–South Korea relations. Works in other areas, including the Battle of Okinawa, have also been been translated into Korean, notably Tomiyama Ichirō’s Heiwa o tsukuru to iu koto (What it takes to make peace) and Senjō no kioku (Memories of the battlefield), translated by Yim Sung-mo (see Tomiya- ma, 1999 and 2002, in references). These earlier studies were known to anti-base groups in South Korea before the Okinawa “boom.” The anti-base movememt thus offered an alternative to the South Korean antiwar movement’s “Yankee Go Home” slogans by emphasizing a life force that can confront violence. They realized that the Okinawan philosophy of “Nuchi du takara” (Life is precious) was not “wishful thinking,” did not deny “the shocking reality of Okinawa,” and did not try to “idealize the anti-base movement in Okinawa,” as crit- ics claimed. It was, in fact, a realistic peace discourse that could be shared with South Korean and other peace advocates, used to counter colonial narratives, and denounce crimes by US forces.62 Since the 1960s, South Korea has defined development as modernization. The country’s military regime, instead of resolving the historical issues of the country's colonial legacy, implemented policies that prioritized economic growth, a model that assumed both the backing of US Armed Forces in Korea—who gave the go sign for the Gwangju massacre—and access to Japanese resources. In the context of 1990s South Korea, as migunpumchoewa (GI crimes) became a household word, the anti-Japan, anti- American discourse in South Korea reflected not only the imbricated external colonialism of two empires—the neocolonialism of the former Japanese empire in tandem

60 Hara Ryūsuke, “Kokunaigai no sankasha: Heiwa shūkai no kōryū,” Okinawa Times, July 20, 2000. 61 Arasaki, Tto hanaŭi ilbon: Okinawa iyagi, and Arasaki, Okinawa hyŏndaesa. 62 See for instance Chŏng Yu-ji. Chŏng, “Okinawa enŭn wae ‘Yangk’i go hom’ and ‘Pan Mi’ wa banjŏn ŭn taerip hanŭnga: Ch’otpul siwi lŭl saenggak hamyŏ.” In these papers, Chŏng Yu- jin writes about her experiences in Okinawa—how she first learned about Nuchi du takara (life is precious) while attending the 1997 East Asia–US Women’s Network Against Militarism conference in Okinawa. Moved by the concept, she decided to stay in Okinawa for six months and interview 28 peace activists. Increasingly fierce anti-US protests in Okinawa after 2002 mixed songs such as “Fucking usa” with “Yankee go home” slogans. Chŏng introduced Nuchi du takara as a reflective concept for understanding the internal mechansisms of peace and praised Tomiyama’s paper, “Heiwa o tsukuru to iu koto.”

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 489 with the neoliberal imperialism of the US empire—but also a colonialism internalized by Korean society itself in response to those external forces.63 Since 1996 when the first South Korean anti-base activists visited Okinawa, however, the Okinawa they have presented to the South Korean public has often been altered by the distorting lens of this internal colonialism. “The root cause of the Okinawan people’s suffering and aggreivement is the maintenance of the US-Japan security alliance.”64 This discourse for South Korean domestic consumption emphasized that Okinawans are Ryūkyūans, not Japanese. It portrayed the Okinawans through images of civilians brutally killed by Japanese troops during the Battle of Okinawa or subject- ed to the same kinds of discrimination as Koreans. “It makes me sick to my stomach when mainland Japanese ask me ‘Are you Okinawan?’” is another of the memes that have become part of the dominant discourse representing the Okinawan people in South Korea.65

“Japan is a dangerous country that poses a threat because it has started wars before. Therefore, we need the US to suppress that threat.” I think some South Ko- reas hold that view. So I urge you to visit South Korea and let people know that “Okinawa is different from Japan.” Otherwise, we will lose our incentive to coop- erate with each other and build solidarity.66

With these words, Kim Yong-han, head of the Coalition to Recover Our Land from US Bases (Migun’ Kiji Panhwan Undong Yŏndae) in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, addressed a

63 In 1992, 26-year-old Yun Geum-i, one of the so-called “women in the kijichon [bases],” a prostituted worker near the US military base in Dongducheon, was savagely murdered by Kenneth Markle, a 20-year-old American soldier. He killed Yun by bashing her head in with a coke bottle. He then forced a beer bottle into her vagina and stuck an umbrella into her rectum. In an attempt to destroy the evidence, he covered her body with powdered laundry detergent. He stuffed her mouth with matches before leaving her body. This incident highlighted crimes committed by the US military for the first time since liberation and led to the establishment of the National Campaign for the Eradication of Crimes by US Troops (Chuhanmigun pumchoekŭnjŏl ponbu). 64 Sin Sŭngkŭn, Ku Yŏngku, “Sŏngjogiyŏ Okinawarŭl ttŏnara 51nyŏn noyeŭi salmŭl kkŭnnaeja, Migun ch’ŏlsu hamsŏng tŭnop’ŭn Okinawa hyŏnji rŭp’o” (Stars and Stripes, get out of Okinawa: Put an end to 51 years of enslavement—An on-site report from Oki- nawa where sentiment for removal of the US Bases is growing), Hankyoreh 21 (May 30, 1996), p. 64. 65 Kim Yong-han, “‘Uriga Ilbonin imnikka?’ Najŭn taeuwa ch’abyŏrŭi kiŏkpakke namji anŭn Okinawa” (You call us Japanese? And there are only memories of underclass treatment and discrimination left in Okinawa). Hankyoreh 21 (May 30, 1996), p. 61. 66 Beigun Kichi ni Hantai suru Undō o tōshite Okinawa to Kankoku no Minshū no Rentai o mezasu Kai, Dai 301 kai Okinawa Daigaku Doyō Kyōyō Kōza Shinpojiumu: Kankoku no Beigun kichi mondai, p. 12.

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1998 symposium in Okinawa calling for solidarity between the South Korean and Oki- nawan anti-base movements. The problem I see here are not the feelings of solidarity and empathy that arise from the discovery of mutual similarities. It is rather the reality that South Korean society still harbors the notion that one must first present as “not Japanese” in order to even talk about solidarity and empathy. To win some understanding for the Okinawan experience of historical subjugation and war, one is virtually obliged to stress at the outset that Okinawans are not Japanese. This implicit constraint seems to reflect a deep current of internal colonialism that continues to course through South Korean society. In the late 1990s, Okinawan studies did not present a discursive space or forum for analyzing the internal/external colonialism that was surfacing in South Korea. Few analytical studies of the Battle of Okinawa have been published in Korean. Instead, there are many works that focus on the shared experiences of the authoritarianism that has swept East Asia. Others analyse the formation of an “East Asia network” based on the model of the anti-base movement. Okinawan studies now concentrate on situating Okinawa in an East Asian context. The first rigorous “regional study” of Okinawa in South Korea was published by the Hallym University Institute of Japanese Studies in a special issue of its journal, Hallym Journal of Japanese Studies (vol. 6, 2001). The issue was entitled “Comprehensive Re- search Survey on Japanese Regions and Regional Cities: Focus on Okinawa Prefecture” (Kor. T’ŭkchip: Ilbon ŭi Chibang kwa chibang tosi e kyanhan chonghapchŏk yŏn’gu chosa: Okinawa hyŏn ŭl chungsim ŭro). Although based on field research, the issue stll represents Okinawans with the caveat, “Okinawans, not Japanese,” and thus remains within the orbit of internal colonization. For example, Yang Kee-hoo argues that “Oki- nawa resembles Korea under colonial rule”67 and characterizes it as “‘another Japan’ that is close, yet far.”68 That determination enables South Koreans, who are still coming to grips with the tribulations of their own modern history, to tentatively identify with Okinawans: “Okinawa demonstrates the striking ironies of postwar Japan.”69 Okinawa is framed as the case study of an area that “faces similar problems as South Korea, such as the US military presence with its unequal Status of Forces Agreement (notably the US-South Korea sofa) and the resulting tensions between the bases and citizens’

67 Yang, “Migun kiji wa Ilbon ŭi chŏngbu kan kyan’gye e taehan yŏn’gu: Okinawa Hut’enma kiji ichŏn ŭl tullŏssan chungang, chibang chŏngbu kan kyan’gye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” p. 118. 68 Yang, “Migun kiji wa Ilbon ŭi chŏngbu kan kyan’gye e taehan yŏn’gu: Okinawa Hut’enma kiji ichŏn ŭl tullŏssan chungang, chibang chŏngbu kan kyan’gye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” p. 117. 69 Yang, “Migun kiji wa Ilbon ŭi chŏngbu kan kyan’gye e taehan yŏn’gu: Okinawa Hut’enma kiji ichŏn ŭl tullŏssan chungang, chibang chŏngbu kan kyan’gye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” pp. 116–19.

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 491 organizations.”70 Yang notes that the relocation of Okinawa’s US Marine Air Base at Futenma must be considered in order to end the “ongoing suffering” of Okinawans and then asserts:

Japan’s financial assistance to Asian nations including Okinawa is important, but at its core, the problem that it faces today is one not of money but of ethics, mo- rality, and international law. For the past 50 years, Japan’s neighbors have de- manded that Japan change its attitudes towards them, not offer monetary handouts.71

The problem with this argument’s empathetic assumptions lies in its abrupt demand of a change in attitude, not “monetary handouts.” It is as if Yang is speaking on behalf of all Okinawans, but without bothering to examine the deeper roots of his empathetic gaze. Again, I would point out that the problem lies not with the attitude of the Japa- nese government per se, but rather with Yang’s narrative, which is based on the pre- sumed “ongoing suffering” of the Okinawan people and intimates that Okinawans might actually refuse that assistance if the government does not change its posture. Yang concludes his paper by quoting a columnist and scholar of religion, Chi Myong- kwan: “When I found myself among the Yamantonchu (on the plane home from my first trip to Okinawa), I couldn’t help feeling the coldness of their smiles.”72 Yang then cites that author:

That there is a region of Japan with a population of 1.1 million that is very different from the rest of the country is perhaps a blessing for Japan, opening it up— like the Sea of Galilee—to new possibilities. Because [that region] is in a per- petual state of oppression, it could come to play a unique role—a place within Japan where empathy towards Asia could be expressed. If on the other hand Ja- pan’s haughty attitudes and behavior [Nihon no arikata] toward Asia become more extreme, critical intellectuals and members of the pubic could come to view Okinawa as a kind of mecca.73

70 Yang, “Migun kiji wa Ilbon ŭi chŏngbu kan kyan’gye e taehan yŏn’gu: Okinawa Hut’enma kiji ichŏn ŭl tullŏssan chungang, chibang chŏngbu kan kyan’gye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” p. 120. 71 Yang, “Migun kiji wa Ilbon ŭi chŏngbu kan kyan’gye e taehan yŏn’gu: Okinawa Hut’enma kiji ichŏn ŭl tullŏssan chungang, chibang chŏngbu kan kyan’gye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” p. 135. 72 Quoted in Yang, “Migun kiji wa Ilbon ŭi chŏngbu kan kyan’gye e taehan yŏn’gu,” p. 135. He is citing Chi Myong-kwan, Hakyoku no jidai ni ikiru shinkō (A creed for living in a cata- strophic age). Tōkyō: Shinkyō Shuppansha, 1985, pp. 65 ff. Chi was known for his factually reliable columns, which were serialized in the Japanese journal Sekai from 1973 to 1988. Writing under the pseudonym T.K. Sei during the era of military dictatorship, his bal- anced views on South Korea-Japan relations won a wide readership. 73 Yang, “Migun kiji wa Ilbon ŭi chŏngbu kan kyan’gye e taehan yŏn’gu,” p. 135 (Chi, Hakyoku no jidai ni ikiru shinkō, pp. 65 ff).

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It may be true that a “different” sort of place such as Okinawa in Japan is a blessing in disguise. But what happens when, in order to criticize “Japan’s haughty attitudes and behavior toward Asia,” “critical intellectuals” and “members of the public” politi- cize Okinawa? Doesn’t that in effet erase, by ignoring, the pain and grief of the people who actually live there? The problem is precisely the “nullifying gaze” that regards Oki- nawa as a place of possiblities waiting for others to discover and realize (for their own purposes). It is “critical intellectuals” and “members of the public” who create that narrative structure, with no awareness of, or interest in, the very real problems of the people who live in Okinawa. Many South Koreans direct that same uncritical gaze toward Okinawans when they use the islands as an example of a successful anti-base movement in order to promote their own struggles. In his article “Okinawa and South Korea: Shared Contemporary History and Rela- tionship,” Jun Sang-in posits Okinawa and South Korea as “communities with a kind of shared community” and uses the term “annexation” (heigō) to describe the incorpora- tion of the Ryūkyūs into the Japanese state that took place between 1872 and 1879 (the so-called Ryūkyū disposition). For Jun, it is quite natural for South Koreans to feel a sense of solidarity and empathy with Okinawans, who are also victims of Japanese imperialism and US hegemony. This sense of being “fellow sufferers” is reinforced by a host of common problems: GI rapes, the comfort-women issue, the Jeju uprising of 1948–49, the Gwangju democratization movement of the 1980s, and the human rights and women’s movements of the late 1990s. Jun argues for a spirit of solidarity able to “challenge the logic of power centering around Japanese imperialism, US military hegemony, and the Japan–US security alliance” in East Asia.74 Jun Sang-in reiterates the similarities between South Korea and Okinawa and even sees a common destiny for the two. In his discourse, he links the problem of “former comfort women” with “crimes committed on US bases today” but embellishes those terms in order to compare them and accentuate the continuing ordeal of Okinawans. Jun mentions the “spirits of deceased [Korean] comfort women and forcibly mobilized conscripts,” but nowhere does he broach the question of Koreans who were aban- doned in Okinawa and remained there after the war, or the Okinawans, still living, who met and engaged with them. These victims and the war dead become mere rhetorical devises for advancing his own arguments.75 Jun places the anguish of Okinawa and South Korea in their East Asian setting, depicting the two as “fellow sufferers.” By uncritically juxtaposing past and present suffering, however, he seems to infer that such difficulties have become a permanent fixture of people’s lives, one that is without remedy. Nonetheless, the South Korean public has steadily gained a sounder understanding of Okinawa and the base issue. Two scholarly works of particular interest were

74 Jun, “Chungsŭng kwa Han’guk: kŭnhyŏndaesa ŭi kongyu wa yugwan,” p. 146. 75 Jun, “Chungsŭng kwa Han’guk: kŭnhyŏndaesa ŭi kongyu wa yugwan,” p. 138.

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published in 2008 following a dispute among the authors over the titles. They are Oki- nawa, Military Base Island: Reality and the Anti-Base Movement edited by Jeong Geun- sik, Jeon Gyeongsu, and Yi Jiwon, and Okinawa, Border Island: Memory and Identity edited by Jeong Geunsik, Ju Eunu, and Gim Baekyeong. Published by Nonhyŏng in Seoul, both works relied on studies funded by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation. Internal debates among the authors arose over the title, Okinawa, Military Base Island. “The situation in Okinawa is better known than before, and the wording may now appear anachronistic to many. Worse yet, it could tarnish Okinawa’s image.” In the end, it was decided to retain that title to express “continued suffering” in the expectation that it would eventually become obsolete.76 Nearly 30 papers in the fields of sociology, cultural anthropology, international politics, history, and women’s studies were included in this groundbreaking endeavor, which was one of the catalysts that sparked South Korean's Okinawa boom. Both books warrant careful reading not only by anti-base activists who have forged relationships with Okinawans, but also by researchers seeking common ground on the issues of ter- rorism and authoritarianism in East Asia. Two other volumes, published in Japanese as well as Korean, may be read as companion works: Ongoing Colonialism: Gender, Ethnic- ity, Race, and Class (Iwasaki Minoru et al., eds., 2005) and The Occupation of Okinawa and the Recovery of Japan: How Colonialism was Perpetuated (Nakano Toshio et al., eds., 2006). Despite this broad-ranging debate only one study has focused on eyewitness accounts of the Battle of Okinawa. That is Yakabi Osamu’s essay, “The Logic Behind the Civilian Massacres in the Battle of Okinawa” (Okinawa, Border Island: Memory and Identity). To be sure, there are many venues in Okinawa where survivors recount their experiences in public: commemorations, public urban spaces, community centers, movie theaters, peace and anti-base gatherings, etc. These testimonies are currently being recorded and analyzed by a few South Korean researchers. Yet relatively few academic studies have dealt with personal war memories, or read and compared the oral histories collected and published by municipalities across Okinawa. The scarcity of firsthand accounts and survivor interviews is not the problem, however. The real diffi- culty lies in the way that South Korean scholars have reconstructed war narratives, often tailoring them to suit national preconceptions. Kang Sung Hyun, for instance, takes up the problem of mass suicides during the Battle of Okinawa (“Mobilizing for Death and the Possibility of Avoiding It: Okinawa’s ‘Forced Mass Suicides’” in Okinawa, Border Island: Memory and Identity). After discussing coercive “group suicides” during the Battle of Okinawa, Kang observes astutely that ”We should not try to isolate and examine each of the innumerable civilian massacres that have been produced in East Asia by the serial agitations of Japanese and American

76 Lee, “Introduction,” p. 29.

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300845 494 Appendix imperialism. Instead, it is necessary to grasp the continuities that link them.” 77 That perspective, he says, points to a new research approach. He concludes:

The possibility of foreseeing the likelihood of violence and avoiding it is not limited to coerced mass suicides in Okinawa. There are diverse and tangible examples of “civilian massacres” that afford important insights. Massacres of ordinary people have occurred across the whole modern history of East Asia. The Nanking Massacre (1937), the Okinawa mass suicides and other killings, Taiwan’s massacre of February 28, 1947, the Jeju Island uprising of April 3, 1948, the Korean War atrocities, and the slaughter of civilians in post-liberation South Korea are ample proof of that assertion.78

Kang does not hesitate to ask: “Shouldn't we strive to understand the Okinawan war in the broader historical context of the Korean Peninsula and East Asia, rather than con- fining our analysis to Okinawa or Japan alone?”79 Kang goes on to critique Japan’s postwar political and economic regime, which is centered around its military alliance with the United States, as an antidote to that country’s rightward turn. He refuses to view Japanese colonial rule over Korea as a Japan-South Korea bilateral issue, situating it instead in its proper Cold War context. When it comes to Okinawa, however, this author has some qualms. In using Okinawan survivor narratives to find a common East Asian experiential terrain, it seems to me that Kang risks turning the Okinawan “other” into a statistical average. The “othering” of war survivors also makes possible arguments about “citizenship.” Ch’oe Hyun writes that Okinawa is a case study of special interest. “Looking at the process by which Ryūkyūans have become Japanese,” he says, “it is evident that the modern Japanese state has managed to turn an ethnic group that clearly differed culturally from the Japanese into Japanese nationals [Nihon kokumin] whose ethnic identity is also Japanese [Nihon minzoku].” Ch’oe adds that “the power of the Okinawan reversion movement under US military governance is responsible for the success of that transformation.”80 Ch’oe discusses Okinawan identity solely in terms of what he calls “modern citizenship,” but without considering the impact on Okinawans of American military violence during the postwar US occupation. Under American rule, Okinawans emphasized a common identity with mainland Japanese. According to Ch’oe, once a “modern

77 Kang, “Chukŭm ŭrosŏŭi tongwŏn kwa ie taehan chŏhang kanŭngsŏng: Okinawa chiptan chagyŏl ŭi sarye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” p. 188. 78 Kang, “Chukŭm ŭrosŏŭi tongwŏn kwa ie taehan chŏhang kanŭngsŏng: Okinawa chiptan chagyŏl ŭi sarye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” p. 188. 79 Kang, “Chukŭm ŭrosŏŭi tongwŏn kwa ie taehan chŏhang kanŭngsŏng: Okinawa chiptan chagyŏl ŭi sarye lŭl chungsim ŭro,” p. 189. 80 Choe, “Kŭndae kukka wa sit’ijŭnsip—Ryukyuin esŏ Ilbonin ŭro,” p. 379.

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 495 national identity” was formed following reversion, however, it became difficult for Oki- nawans to alter that identity. During the era of direct US domination, Okinawan griev- ances against the American occupier pushed them to bond with Japanese, but once Okinawa was returned to Japanese control, anger at the wartime injuries and injustices Okinawans had suffered at the hands of the imperial army resurfaced to undermine that identity. Such feelings were reinforced by the continued treatment of Okinawans as second-class citizens by the contemporary Japanese state. “Judging from that experience,” Ch’oe asserts, “a concept of citizenship that is equi- table and accepting of diversity and does not alienate minorities is the precondition for a true regional community.” He criticizes South Korean academic bodies that es- pouse an East Asian Community for their failure to study the modalities of East Asian citizenship. That lacuna, he says, threatens to reduce the East Asian project to an exercise in wishful thinking. I find myself objecting strongly, however, when Ch’oe attempts to use Okinawa, with its bitter legacy of war and postwar occupation, as the “productive argument” needed to transform that idle dream into a viable undertaking.81 Okinawa can be approached from many angles, but Shin Ju-back’s essay alone takes up the wartime histories of both Okinawans and Korean labor conscripts in his analysis of the memorial to South Korean nationals. As Shin points out, one of the reasons for this apparent lack of interest is the absence of cumulative studies of the historical links between Okinawa and South Korea.82 As popular as the subject of Okinawa is with the South Korean public, Okinawan research as an academic pursuit is still in its infancy. The field is just beginning to branch out and experiment with interdisciplinary approaches. The term Yugu, for instance, remains largely unknown outside of the discipline. In fact, it is possible to discuss Okinawan studies without reference to a spe- cific conceptual model or academic discipline only because earlier research has es- chewed new and diverse methodologies. As this essay has shown, the paucity of published research is due to the selective nature of knowledge about Okinawa. This has little to do with the Okinawa boom. A sober assessment is that Korean scholars came face to face with internal and external colonialism when the historical experience of Korea, which was relegated to the “periphery” by the dominant regional powers, encountered Okinawa, another marginal- ized area. That historical consciousness has shaped—and limited—knowledge about Okinawa. The result is that islanders have been reduced to passive onlookers in an essentially South Korean drama even as Okinawa is held up, paradoxically, as a potential site of solidarity. Would South Koreans, I wonder, share the same “sense of unease about the nation-state” voiced in Okinawa (or Yugu or Ryūkyū), a place Koreans once dismissed as a Japanese backwater on the East Asian fringe? Kano Masanao examines this uneasiness in his paper “Okinawa, From the Periphery,” written at the

81 Choe, “Kŭndae kukka wa sit’ijŭnsip—Ryukyuin esŏ Ilbonin ŭro,” pp. 406–07. 82 Shin, “Han’guk kŭnhyŏndaesa wa Okinawa,” p. 123.

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request of the Historical Science Society of Japan. “The subject made me a little uneasy,” he wrote. “I find it unsettling that someone can simply ordain where the periphery is to be.”83 After reflecting on the issue, Kano notes that “the periphery, precisely because it is the periphery, must have been forced to undergo a particularly painful historical experience.” “That experience,” he writes, “can illuminate the true nature of the center.” He continues: “the question that keeps recurring in Okinawa is whether to break ultimate- ly with the concept of the periphery or extirpate it altogether.”84 Kano’s paper was translated into Korean and included in East Asia from the Periphery, a volume published in South Korea to reassess the cases of China and Japan. Would South Korean readers, I wonder, be able to understand the determination (ishi) of Okinawans, who never became fully peripheral after being incorporated into the Japanese state, to re- nounce or obliterate that quasi-peripheral status? Since 2000, a different way of regarding postwar Japan has captured the South Ko- rean imagination. Postwar Japan is now seen as a “military base state” rather than a “peace state,” and Okinawa is considered to be its truest representation.85 In this view, South Korea is portrayed as a “battlefield state” (senjō kokka). Since the end of World War ii, Japan has presented itself to the world community as a peace-loving nation whose constitution renounces war as a sovereign right. That posture has been possible, however, only because the burden of maintaining US military bases in Japan has been shifted from the Japanese main islands to Okinawa, where the majority of bases are now concentrated. Japan’s peaceful image is merely a façade that hides the reality of Fortress Okinawa, which exemplifies Japan’s real position as a “base state.” The question is, can the Battle of Okinawa and its memories—that “particularly painful historical experience”—enable Okinawa to transcend the military role thrust on it by the postwar state? Perhaps at this point, South Korean Okinawan specialists will want to pause a moment to reexamine the “fellow-sufferer” syndrome that has infused their work and rethink the road ahead.

4 The South Korean Narrative: From “Memories of the Map” to “Memories of the Battlefield”

I have argued that when South Korean scholarship discovered Okinawa in the 1960s, folklore studies fastened on those islands as the site of a still extant “proto-Korean folk

83 Kano, Okinawa chubyŏn ŭrobut’ŏŭi palsin, p. 156. 84 Kano, “Shūhen kara Okinawa,” pp. 199–200. 85 Nam, “Chōsen sensō to Nihon: ‘Kichikokka’ ni okeru sensō to heiwa.” This perspective on Okinawa is also reflected in Nam’s essay, “Han’guk Chŏnjaeng kwa kiji kukka Ilbon ŭi t’ansaeng: Okinawa munje ŭi sangbu kujo.”

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300845 Okinawa in South Korean Scholarship 497 tradition” that had been obliterated on the peninsula by a combination of Japanese colonial rule and postwar military dictatorships. Researchers dreamed of reconstruct- ing that ancient tradition from Okinawan cultural traits. South Korean folklorists adopted the same methodological approaches as their Japanese peers—cultural origins, diffusionism, and genealogy. Korean historical research, on the other hand, focused on Chosŏn-Ryūkyū relations as revealed in ancient documents such as the History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa), the Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok), and other official Chinese and Ryūkyūan materials. In 1981, Yun Chŏng-ok became the first Korean scholar to lead a research team in examining the comfort women issue. She may also have been the first to actually visit Okinawa for that purpose. In the 1980s, former Korean military conscripts, too, traveled to Okinawa and met many Okinawans but had no scholarly ambitions. Until the mid- 1990s, when Okinawan studies finally secured a place in the South Korean academy, scholars had only indirect contact with Okinawa via Japanese folklore research or historical studies of the Chosŏn Wangjo Sillok documents. This appendix has traced the geneology of Okinawan studies as the field emerged piecemeal from the sporadic and uncoordinated research efforts of the 1960s. In fact, traveling to Okinawa for any reason was difficult for much of South Korea’s post- liberation history. Full-fledged research did not get underway until the 1990s, by which time Japan studies and modern Japanese and South Korean history had become established academic disciplines. The restrictive conditions that shaped folklore and historical research also provided the foundation for Okinawan studies, but in reality, fieldwork on “Okinawa” or “Yugu” was very much a minor concern at the time. Today, Okinawan studies is evolving into a substantially different area of intellectual reflection and inquiry. In many cases, research now involves analyzing and writing up field notes taken in Okinawa itself. Such experiences bring scholars face to face with the realities of the US military deployment and the lives of ordinary Okinawans. Oki- nawa is also attracting scholarly attention as a “region of East Asia.” I believe this new current has helped South Koreans rediscover the history of the Ryūkyūs, and many have now discarded “Okinawa” for "Ryūkyū," which they pronounce in the Okinawan manner. Use of this name has also raised public awareness of Okinawa’s deep links to South Korea via America’s East Asian security arrangements and particularly of the base issue. The personal ties that South Korean anti-base activists have cultivated with Okinawans are playing an important role in shifting the old terms of discourse. New directions are being explored, with empathy and solidarity as core research values. This admirable energy notwithstanding, a number of problems in current South Korean scholarship must be addressed. One is the unconscious colonialist attitude reflected in the disclaimer, “Okinawan, not Japanese.” Another is the general lack of interest in the Battle of Okinawa, which remains integral to the Okinawan self-image. Overcoming these flaws is a condition for the emergence of true empathy and solidarity.

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Without adding Yugu to the historians’ lexicon, South Koreans would never have learned of the historical ties between the Chŏson Dynasty and Yugu (the Ryūkyū King- dom). “Yugu” allowed South Koreans to travel back in time. Without the rediscovery of the word “Ryūkyū” through direct interactions with Okinawans in the late 1990s, it would have been impossible for researchers and writers to share what they learned directly from Okinawa with other Koreans who could not travel there. Scholarship advances as its focus alternates between diachronic time (the past) and synchronic time and space (the present). As shown in this chapter, however, Okinawan studies in South Korea have not only failed to comprehend the harsh present-day realities of the US military presence in Okinawa, but they have also ignored the past, including the Korean men and women who lived and, in many cases, died there during the war. Moreover, in an academic discipline that views Okinawa as an integral part of East Asia, it is disquieting to see intellectuals address South Korean audiences as if they had magically been empowered to speak on behalf of all Okinawans, suggesting, for example, that the two peoples are quite similar. Okinawa thus becomes part of an overweening South Korean “self” as the expert explains glibly what Okinawans really feel and think. Okinawans speak only through their South Korean intermediaries. Since their authentic voices are not required, they become mere extensions of their interpreters’ own personalities or imaginations, and no one seems to notice. The remedy is to seek direct association with a multifaceted Okinawa that has many names. And every time genuine contact is made, “we” the authors of the narrative, will be asked “where are you from?” The continuity of past and present that informs that question is tangible. What is required is not a detailed research plan but a place where South Koreans and Okinawans can gather, acknowledge each other, and confront together the internal colonialism that both long to be free of. In this productive space called Okinawa, which exists somewhere between Yugu and Ryūkyū, critical scholarship can narrow the intellectual divide that separates synchronic time and space from the diachronic past by directly engaging with the pain of people who survived the Okinawan war and continue to live on former battlefields. It is exactly here, at this fraught point of convergence, that I try to position myself as someone bearing witness to this privileged site of remembrance, where the question “where are you from” is not an innocent query, but an ethical challenge.

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