A one-sided depiction of the ROK-US alliance and SOFA

Last week an op-ed titled "Is South Korea’s Alliance with the United States Worth It?" by Se-woong Koo, best known for running Korea Expose, appeared in the New York Times. As a piece meant to educate American readers about negative effects the alliance has had on Koreans, it succeeds, but at the cost of being rather one-sided. On the one hand, well, yes, it's an op-ed, and op-eds tend to lean in one direction over another. As well, there's often not a lot of space, so it's not difficult for nuance to get lost. And more material could have been excised by an editor. Still, it seems to play the victimization note a little too consistently to suggest that wasn't the intent.

The introduction based around a personal anecdote is an effective and interesting beginning. It is noted that "South Korea’s relationship with the United States started as one of dependency," which is a good point - though more important might be the fact that a large number of educated people then, and still, feel ashamed by this. For millennia, societies the world over have adopted aspects of the culture or social organization of more powerful states they hoped to influence, but Koreans - North and South - have turned the Korean term describing this - Sadaejuui - into an epithet, which reflects both shame at dependency as well as a desire to overcome that shame. In fact, the thesis of the article - "when that partner turns ungrateful, and even unreliable, it is time to question the idea that the alliance is sacrosanct" - is not a new one. One only need look at the rhetoric critical of the US in the Korean news media during the 1988 Olympics, couched as it was in the need to "recover wounded national pride," to see anger lashed out at an "ungrateful" or "disrespectful" guest. Such criticism of the "erosion of South Korea’s sovereign spirit" had been alive and well for decades, at least in some circles. Reading news reports from the 1950s and 1960s makes clear that more than a few Koreans have long chafed at the US military presence here, and frustration has boiled over periodically throughout the entire length of the alliance (as well as due to the presence of Americans here generally, for example during the Haysmer apple incident in 1926).

Mention is also made of Korea being compelled to contribute soldiers to America’s wars, but all we read of are 5,000 Korean dead and Agent Orange exposure, making it sound like an unmitigated loss for Koreans rather than the huge shot in the arm it was to Korea's economy (right down to the village level due to soldiers sending money home). Much as the Korean War had provided Japan with an opportunity for economic recovery after the destruction of the Pacific War, the Vietnam War (and the normalization of relations with Japan) provided Korea with a means to develop its economy.

As for the withdrawal of US troops leading to less "psychological dependen[ce] on a foreign army," this may well be true, though at their heart, both Koreas' feelings of 'national inadequacy' stem from the condition of Korea's division. And while Germany's leader may be able to say "We Europeans have to take our destiny into our own hands," Germany is in a rather different situation than Korea, with a rather different set of neighbours. One reason to be wary of the withdrawal of US troops is precisely because that is what North Korea has always wanted, and still continues to want as a precursor to the unification of peninsula under North Korean control, as Brian Myers and others have argued. This goes back decades, and the message is most intelligible for non-Korean readers in the pro-North Korea propaganda of the American-Korean Friendship Information Center based in New York in the early 1970s. Links to their material can be found here, though this blurb from their magazine Korea Focus makes things clear enough (from Vol. 1, No. 1, page 58):

Withdrawal of US troops might sound like a good idea in theory. In practice, I'm not so sure.

What I found especially one-sided was this:

Then there is the Status of Forces Agreement, signed between the two nations in 1966 and renewed twice. It has been understood to grant the United States military nearly exclusive jurisdiction over its personnel, such that even high-profile offenses committed by American soldiers against South Korean citizens go unpunished.

One of the most heinous examples happened in 2002 when an American military vehicle ran over two middle-school students, crushing them to death. The perpetrators were shielded from South Korean authorities and a United States military court dismissed the case.

The "It has been understood" part is rather weaselly, in that this perception by the Korean people, encouraged by citizens groups and the media, is mostly incorrect (especially since 1988 and even more so since the 2000s). In not saying so, however, it conveys to American readers that this one-sided "understanding" is factual. The idea that the "United States military [has] nearly exclusive jurisdiction over its personnel, such that even high-profile offenses committed by American soldiers against South Korean citizens go unpunished" better applies the pre-SOFA days (or perhaps to its first 20 years) rather than the present.

SOFA first came into effect on February 9, 1967. Below are some Korea Times articles from that year about SOFA cases (some are hard to make out, unfortunately). The first is from February 11, two days after SOFA came into effect:

Just because the case could be subject to Korean jurisdiction didn't mean Korean prosecutors pursued the case, however, especially since they would have been rather busy, what with 122 crimes committed by US soldiers in the first month, as this March 10 article relates:

As it says above,

The 122 "offenses" reported to the ministry include 36 assault cases, 40 accidental homicide and injury cases involving traffic accidents, and 28 traffic law violation cases. The ministry statistics said that 35 of the 122 cases were turned over to U.S. military investigation authorities. Korean authorities earlier decided to turn all minor offenses over to U.S. authorities and to handle only "important" cases. 

The first soldier to be indicted by Korean prosecutors was Billy Cox, who was charged on March 29, 1967, as this June 20 article relates.

A second soldier was subject to Korean jurisdiction two months later, as this May 23 article relates:

Korean authorities tended to prosecute only serious crimes, particularly murder, arson, and rape, while leaving assaults to USFK authorities. A comment by a Seoul prosecutor in a November 2, 1988 Stars and Stripes article, after the Olympics, indicates again that there was an element of choice in not prosecuting every case:

While the U.S. ROK Status of Forces Agreement gives South Korea primary jurisdiction in incidents involving American troops outside U.S. bases, [Seoul Prosecutor] Yoo [Sang-su] said authorities "have waived that jurisdiction in the past." "The national consciousness toward American troops in Korea has changed, however, and it is time we begin exercising a wider scale of jurisdiction," he said.

Needless to say, the idea that off duty American soldiers were out of reach of Korean authorities is an exaggeration, to say the least, and the post-1988 "exercising [of] a wider scale of jurisdiction" was directly tied to attempts to recover national pride and a change in "national consciousness" after the Olympics.

As for the use of the word "heinous" to describe the 2002 traffic accident - a word with synonyms like "odious, wicked, evil, atrocious, monstrous, abominable, detestable, contemptible, reprehensible, despicable" - this makes rather clear the bias of the author, since it gives the impression that there was malice aforethought in the running over of the two girls, when accounts by those who were there make clear it was an accident. A narrative of Korean victimization at the hands of unpunishable Americans - the standard SOFA narrative since 1988 - drove thousands into the streets for the first, avowedly "non-political," candlelight protests, which have been a means for expression of the national will ever since.

What can be troubling for the US military is the way in which incidents involving alcohol can turn into mob scenes - such as during the 1988 Olympics [here and here], the 1995 subway incident, or the 2004 Sinchon stabbing incident - and the way in which these incidents have been politicized, with the prosecution altering charges for political reasons, particularly to appease public anger. According to ROK Drop, after the 2004 Sinchon stabbing incident, "The soldier was at first charged with simple battery since he was trying to protect himself, but due to all the misinformation in the media the charges were upgraded to attempted murder." A firsthand account by that soldier makes clear just how terrifying the mob scene he got caught up in was, but also how fairly the judge treated him:

[T]he judge told me he would give me a self defense sentence which was typically 2+ years… even though I was convicted of attempted murder. Basically the conviction was to appease the people of S. Korea, and the sentence was relative to a "self defense with a deadly weapon" conviction in that country. The judge was truly fair to both parties in that aspect.

His sentence gives hope that judges have the ability to fairly deal with biased prosecutions. Needless to say, there's a lot complexity involved in the SOFA issue, far from the black and white way in which it is often portrayed. Such simplistic formulations involving victimized Koreans obscure more than they illuminate, and do a disservice to one's readers.


Above I made mention of how a narrative of Korean victimization at the hands of unpunishable Americans has been the standard SOFA narrative since 1988. I've translated a key article from that time and posted it here.

The history depicted in "Ode To My Father"

In my previous post, I reviewed and offered an interpretation of the recent film "Ode To My Father (국제시장)." Along the way to writing the post I did quite a bit of reading about the events portrayed in the film, so below I will look at how the film followed (or didn't) the historical facts.

While the scene of a Korean begging the American general to save the refugees at Hungnam is not really what happened, it accords with the basic facts. Several accounts point to Dr. Hyun Bong-hak as being in great part responsible for the evacuation of almost 100,000 refugees from Hungnam. As this brief biographical entry about him describes it, he was from Hamheung and studied medicine at Severance Medical School before studying in the U.S. in the late 1940s. When the Korean War broke out, he headed south, treated wounded civilians, and volunteered his services as a translator for the U.S. Military, who asked him to work for the commander of the US X Army Corps in Hamheung. As his children described him in a recent Korea Herald article:

During the Korean War, our father served as a civil affairs Adviser to Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond to help rebuild Hamheung, North Korea. Christianity had a strong foothold in Hamheung, so when the Americans liberated Hamheung from the communists, they were embraced by the locals.

Shortly thereafter, the U.N. forces began to retreat. This was disastrous for the Christians, local government leaders and anyone working for the U.N. Forces, as all would be tortured and massacred by the communists. Our father advocated for a civilian evacuation, stating, “It didn’t seem fair to me that those who had risked communist retaliation by cooperating with the Americans should be abandoned so readily.”

He received constant encouragement from Col. Edward R. Forney, the foremost amphibious expert at the time who masterfully plotted out how the evacuation would be implemented; and together, they met with Gen. Almond several times. Gen. Almond approved of the mission with a planned evacuation of 4,000-5,000 civilians from Hamheung to Heungnam by train.

The Hamheung railroad station was flooded with more than 50,000 people. Over 100,000 arrived at Heungnam Port circumventing the roads, which were reserved for military personnel and closely monitored by MPs. Blankets and rice were given to the refugees who remained at the port in minus 10 degrees Celsius weather.

The Meredith Victory was the last ship to leave the Heungnam Harbor, which was rife with mines. Designed to carry 12 passengers with a 47-person crew, it brought 14,000 refugees to safety and ultimately made it into the Guinness World Records as “the largest evacuation from land by a single ship.” The port was blown up to render it useless to the communist forces. Many civilians who should have been evacuated were left behind.

It's interesting that this account refers to many being left behind, while American accounts I've read describe getting all of the refugees out. For statistics, as this article notes,

At the finish a total of 105,000 US and ROK military personnel had been embarked and 91,000 civilian refugees. The statistics of supplies and equipment were equally impressive—17,500 vehicles and 350,000 measurement tons of cargo loaded out of Hungnam on 6 APA, 6 AKA, 12 TAP, 76 time-charter ships, 81 LST, and 11 LSD loads.

As for the aforementioned Meredith Victory, it appears in the movie as the ship they escape on. As it turns out, there is not only a book about this voyage - during which 5 babies were born - there is also a documentary that can be watched here, and a monument to the Hungnam evacuation which features a model of the Meredith Victory was unveiled in 2005 on Geoje-do, where the ship unloaded the refugees. This article also points to Maryknoll Father Patrick H. Cleary, a missionary in Korea who joined X Corps as a chaplain, as someone who contributed to the refugee rescue effort. What should be clear is that yes, there was a Korean who asked an American general to evacuate the refugees, but it certainly didn't happen at the last minute once the Americans were aboard and ready to leave, which makes them appear more callous than they were. This contributes to a social Darwinist view of the world as a harsh place in which Korea was the 'shrimp among [Chinese and American] whales' and had to beg the (initially cold and unwilling) Americans for help in order to survive.

Years after the war, once Deok-su had grown into a young man who worked as a labourer to support his family, he is convinced by his friend Dal-gu to apply to work in West Germany as miners, where they could make lots of money. These "workers sent to Germany" (padok nodongja) are examined in an article by Kim Won titled "Memories of Migrant Labor : Stories of Two Korean Nurses Dispatched to West Germany" [The Review of Korean Studies, 12(4), 2009.12, 111-151]. As the article notes,

In the case of mine workers, padok started in 1963 and continued until 1978. Until 1980, the Deutchemarks that a total of 7,936 padok miners and 10,032 padok nurses remitted to Korea were an important means of “foreign exchange earnings” (oehwa beori) and for solving the domestic labor surplus problem before the advent of a loan economy (cha-gwan gyeongje). At present [2009], about 5,000 out of the over 20,000 padok workers continue to live in Germany, and some 5,000 padok workers eventually chose to immigrate to the Americas. Among Korean residents in Germany, the number of nurses is said to be about 500 today. The last Korean miner retired in 2003.

The article also adds that in 1967, "padok workers’ remittances to Korea represented 36 percent of the total foreign exchange holdings of the country." It wasn't only men working as coal miners who worked in West Germany, however. Deok-su soon meets and falls in love with Yeong-ja, who is working as a nurse there. As the above article notes, Korean women were initially, in 1959, sent to Germany to study nursing for three years and then could work as nurses there. Then in 1966 a new phase began with the sending of nurses already trained in Korea to Germany, which was initially organized by a medical organization and coordinated by the Korean Foreign Development Corporation. These were all organized through civilian, medical, or Christian organizations, however and it wasn't until August 1969 that an agreement between South Korea and West Germany on the hiring of nurses was signed, and a quota was set. Prior to this agreement, 2,080 nurses had worked in Germany, and numbers increased a great deal in the ensuing years, as per the article:

In the end, some 18,000 Koreans worked as coal miners or nurses in West Germany and their earnings in foreign currency contributed a great deal to the growth of the Korean economy.

Another very large contribution to the Korean economy's growth was the Vietnam war, and Deok-su is depicted going to Vietnam with his friend Dal-gu to work as contractors and make lots of money. Over 300,000 Korean soldiers fought in the war, leaving behind a legacy, literally, of Korean-Vietnamese children abandoned by their fathers, as well as a reputation for brutality. In addition to these soldiers being paid in U,S. dollars, South Korea also benefited in many other ways from the Vietnam War (much as Japan did from the Korean War), as pointed out in "America's rented troops: South Koreans in Vietnam," by Frank Baldwin, which was published in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Volume 7 Number 4, and is available as a pdf here (pages 33-40):

The major forms of U.S. commercial assistance were procurement of war supplies in South Korea and construction/service contracts for R.O.K. firms in Vietnam. Among the major South Korean exports to Vietnam were military uniforms, jungle boots, corrugated metal roofing and cement. In the construction and service field, at one point more than eighty South Korean companies held contracts with the U.S. government in Vietnam. Their activities included construction and engineering, transportation of goods, and operating service facilities such as laundry shops and entertainment clubs. South Korean civilian workers in Vietnam were especially well rewarded. According to U.S. government estimates, there were sixteen thousand South Korean foreign contract workers in Vietnam (of a total of twenty-five thousand). Their annual earnings were $8,400-compared to an average of about $200 in South Korea.

ROK troops pulled out in March 1973, though the Korean military did send a ship to rescue South Koreans from Vietnam in 1975 as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. As described in "The Pursuit of State Status and the Shift toward International Norms: South Korea’s Evolution as a Host Country for Refugees," by Hans Schattle and Jennifer McCann, published in Journal of Refugee Studies (2014) 27 (3) (pgs 317-337):

The influx of Indochinese asylum seekers into South Korea began with the April 30, 1975 evacuation from Vietnam of a group of South Korean nationals, their non-South Korean family members, and a number of primarily Indochinese refugees by a South Korean military vessel (Korean Red Cross Busan Chapter 1993). In the absence of appropriate domestic legislation, the government treated arrivals on an ad hoc basis, setting up a temporary shelter in the port city of Busan. By the end of 1975, officials had managed to settle the 1,562 Indochinese refugees by encouraging female Indochinese refugees married to or in a common-law relationship with a South Korean national at the time of their arrival, to become naturalized citizens or by granting them a continuous permission of sojourn as a stateless person (South Korea did not officially recognize Vietnam at this time) (I. Chung 2009). By contrast, the 977 refugees without such ties to Korean nationals were quickly resettled in third countries (Korean Red Cross Busan Chapter 1993). Then in 1977 a new wave of Indochinese refugees poured into the South China Sea. However, unlike the refugees evacuated in 1975, the government perceived arrivals less as victims of political persecution than as so-called economic migrants (I. Chung 2009), and therefore responded by securitizing arrivals.

It goes on to explain that the ROK went out of its way to stop its ships from picking up Indochinese "boat people," firing a captain who did so and confining those boat people who did arrive to a newly built 'Vietnamese people’s relief center'. "Although criticized for such an approach (Koh 2011), officials pressed hard for third-country resettlement, and as a result, not a single Indochinese refugee who arrived between 1977 and 1989 was permitted to settle in South Korea."

I first became aware of the presence of Vietnamese refugees a few years ago when reading through Korea Herald articles from late 1975 and early 1976. Here is one from December 17, 1975:

Here is another from January 31, 1976:

As mentioned in the previous post, in 1983 KBS broadcast the TV show, "Reuniting Separated Families," planning only to do a single broadcast, but when it proved successful it continued for over four months and led to the reunion of over 10,000 separated families (episodes can be watched here).
The Korea Bang post linked to above says that the reason it took so long for such a reunion show to happen was that the government was too busy developing the country to care much about divided families, and that it was only by the 1980s that enough people had televisions for such a show to be effective. This misses an important factor, I think. Under the anti-communist governments of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee, admitting that you had relatives that might be in North Korea was likely enough to make the authorities suspect your loyalty.

Hopefully the above information proves helpful for those who have seen "Ode To My Father" and wanted to learn more about the history it depicts.

A review of "Ode To My Father"

Youn Je-Kyoun's film "Ode to My Father" [국제시장, or 'International Market'] has become the first film this year to top ten million admissions after its release on December 17. I saw the film new year's eve, and it didn't exactly leave viewers in a cheerful mood afterwards. It's a sad film that depicts several events in Korea's modern history through the eyes of one man who sacrifices to take care of his family after the loss of his father during the Korean War. Despite melodramatic excess and some other flaws, it's an interesting film for many reasons, and is well worth watching. (The following review is full of spoilers.)



The film begins in the present and introduces three elderly characters: Deok-su, his wife Yeong-ja, and his best friend Dal-gu. Deok-su runs a store in the international market in Busan, and we follow him as he interacts with: developers who want him to sell his store (he refuses); his adult children (who seem entitled and dump the grandchildren on him and his wife so they can travel); and his memories of the past. These flashbacks reveal that he has participated in some of the more dramatic touchstones of Korea's modern history, starting with the evacuation of UN forces and North Korean refugees from Hungnam during the Korean War, the dispatch to West Germany of Koreans to work as nurses and coal miners, the large role played by Korean civilian contractors and soldiers during the Vietnam War, and the 1983 KBS TV show "Reuniting Separated Families," which was so successful in its first live broadcast that it continued for over four months and led to the reunion of over 10,000 separated families, most of whom had been living in South Korea since the war. In many ways it is like Forrest Gump, in that Deoksu takes part in these historical events and interacts with a number of famous Koreans during these flashbacks.

Director Youn has a flair for integrating the smaller, personal stories with the large scale of some of these historical events, and the actors do an admirable job of portraying characters who age over a 50 year period, though this is definitely a tale of men - after their romance leads to marriage, Yeong-ja fades into the background, and we're left with the tale of the sacrifices made for his family by a son, a brother, and a father. Still, for all these strengths the film doesn't have a lot of narrative depth; the film proceeds by repeatedly presenting a scene in the present which triggers a flashback. The audience does have certain pieces of information withheld from it, and certain flashbacks serve to explain why he acts in inexplicable ways in the present. We also see Deok-su change after reflecting on the past, and the film at times implicitly criticizes the younger generations of today for being too self-centered and unappreciative of the sacrifices their elders made. As the Korea Times noted, "One critic caused controversy by calling Youn's latest film a 'conservative' movie that 'glorifies the sacrifices of the older generation.'" "Glorifies" seems too strong a word, partly since the criticisms it makes - often through juxtaposition of past and present, seem fair enough. The film does lay on the melodrama pretty thickly, in the way only a Korean movie can, though the reunion scene on the KBS TV show set in 1983 was guaranteed to bring the audience to tears regardless of the way it was presented. I was reminded of when I saw the 2004 documentary 'Repatriation' and a fellow audience member said to me, "It really does remind you that we're sitting on an open wound."

For all of its blockbuster and melodramatic elements, there is a lot to unpack with this film, and I thought I'd look at its depiction of history and the way in which the film imagines how Korea's role in the world has changed during fifty years of economic development.

The aforementioned Korea Times article mentions that director "Youn also became the first director with two films to top 10 million. 'Haeundae,' a disaster film released in 2009, attracted 11.45 million viewers the same year." A few years ago I looked at Youn's film Haeundae, which I hadn't realized did so well at the box office. I didn't like it, but thought its crashing wave provided an excellent metaphor for the way in which Korean films of the 2000s have dealt with Korean history, portraying people as blamelessly going about their lives when suddenly history crashes into them and sweeps them off their feet. Some of these films have blamed outsiders (such as when South Korean and North Koreans team up to shoot down American aircraft at the end of Welcome to Dongmakgol), and have rarely attempted to explain why the events portrayed occurred - a far cry from the history films of the 1990s. Haeundae's wave inadvertently provided a useful metaphor for these kinds of films (and one could profitably make 'Korean wave' references here, since it's the fact that Korean films (and TV dramas) are so slickly (and expensively) produced now that a larger box office is needed to recoup costs, which encourages simplistic films which appeal to a broader demographic).

It could be argued that 'Ode to my father' also follows the 'wave pattern' in certain ways. While the main character, Deok-su, works to keep a promise to his father to take care of his family (and makes sacrifices in the hope of meeting his father again), the moments in modern Korean history he takes part in occur when he follows others. He (obviously!) follows his parents when they attempt to flee Hungnam, while its his friend Dal-gu who suggests going to Germany and Vietnam. It's also made clear that the 'decision' to have a child and get married was essentially thrust upon him by his soon-to-be wife, so much of his life is shaped by others' decisions.

One thing I noted was the similarity with 'Welcome to Dongmakgol' of having a lone Korean officer beg the Americans to save Korean lives. In 'Dongmakgol' the officer protests the bombing of a village, while in 'Ode to my Father' an officer begs a general to take refugees aboard at Hungnam. In 'Ode' the general relents at the last second and the soldiers are ordered to take the tanks they just loaded aboard the ship off again, much to the anger of one profanity-shouting soldier, and refugees are put on instead. Unlike the 2004 Korean War film 'Taegukki,' in which American soldiers were not even shown, 'Ode' depicts refugees waiting by the ocean while American soldiers retreat and we're told that behind them "The Chinese are coming!" I don't remember the South or North Korean army being mentioned.

What this leaves out, however, is why these refugees were fleeing, and why filmmakers might want to gloss over the actions of the ROK military in North Korea between October and December 1950. Callum MacDonald, in his 1991 Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars article "So Terrible a Liberation - The UN Occupation of North Korea" (which can be downloaded here, and is on pages 3-19) points out how, though the ROK was not given legal sovereignty over liberated North Korea, ROK troops often were the first to arrive in the north and were followed by police and bands of paramilitaries such as the Northwest Youth League (which had carried out much of the repression in Jeju, for example; the dissertation I recently linked to also looks at the use of paramilitaries by the ROK before and during the Korean War). These paramilitaries and police were known to have killed thousands of suspected communist sympathizers after the Incheon Landing in South Korea, so one can only imagine the horror they visited upon North Koreans. As MacDonald notes,

Just before [Syngman Rhee] returned to Seoul [after the Incheon Landing] he informed Hugh Baillie, president of the U.S.-based United Press, that he planned to extirpate communism throughout Korea: "I can handle the Communists. The Reds can bury their guns and bum their uniforms, but we know how to find them. With bulldozers we will dig huge excavations and trenches, and fill them with Communists. Then cover them over. And they will really be underground."

General MacArthur offered his own take on the situation in October 1950 in a conversation with the tutor of the Japanese crown prince, Elizabeth Gray Vining:

"Each house has a North Korean flag and a South Korean flag, and most of the time they don't know which to wave. Both sides line them up and shoot them down. The country was poor to begin with. They will be destroyed, utterly destroyed."

So when the tide of the war turned, it might be easy to understand why those who championed the arrival of the UN forces - or who simply feared being caught in the middle - would want to flee. While starting the story in the middle as the family flees can be explained as wanting to get the story started quickly or due to lack of time, the lack of context, or even reference to the DPRK army or the ROK army, puts the beginning of the film squarely in the "history washed over us" camp of recent Korean films.

As well, while the 'begging for help' scene is not really what happened, it accords with the basic facts,  (to be elaborated on in my next post) which are that Dr. Hyun Bong-hak, an assistant to Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond, commander of the US X Army Corps in Hamheung, convinced General Almond to evacuate tens of thousands of refugees along with the soldiers and equipment; when there turned out to be 100,000 refugees, attempts were made to evacuate all of them, with one ship, the Meredith Victory (which is depicted in the movie), taking 14,000 aboard, a world record.

In the film, during the evacuation, Deok-su's family is separated from his sister and father, and they go to their aunt's house in Busan, where she runs a store in the international market. In the next flashback, years after the war, Deok-su has grown into a young man who works as a labourer to support his family, and who puts off his own dreams to support his younger brother's university education. He is convinced by his friend Dal-gu to apply to work in West Germany as miners, where they can make lots of money. Germany, however, proves to be a struggle for Deok-su and Dal-gu, and the miners are all depicted as being homesick. They all cry in their bunks as they read letters from home, while Yeong-ja, a nurse Deok-su meets and falls in love with, is also depicted as having a difficult time, washing corpses and studying when she's not working. Again, this appears to be different from the memories of the nurses interviewed in the Kim Won article I cite in my next post, who saw their time in Germany as an opportunity. In fact, as the article notes, "At present [2009], about 5,000 out of the over 20,000 padok workers continue to live in Germany, and some 5,000 padok workers eventually chose to immigrate to the Americas." That over half of the 18.000 Koreans who went to work in Germany didn't return home seems to stand against this portrayal of suffering Koreans who made so many sacrifices (more sacrifices, it's implied, than those who remained in Korea).

However, I would argue that what we're being presented with in 'Ode to My Father' is in fact a national coming of age story. The presentation of Korean refugees at Hungnam as 'shrimp among whales' caught between their powerful neighbours -  Chinese and Americans - and the depiction of a Korean begging an American general to save their lives, along with a last minute decision by the general to do so, contributes to a social Darwinist view of the world as a harsh place in which a weak Korea, beset by poverty and war, must beg the (initially cold and unwilling) Americans for help in order to survive.

Once in Germany, this happens again. Koreans, forced to work hard, often shown in tears, missing home, once again beg the powerful - in this case the German head of the mine - to let them save their missing Korean compatriots who have been caught in a mine shaft collapse. Yeong-ja, in tears, begs for their mercy, switching from German to Korean - just to hammer it home for the audience - that the missing are Korean and they should at least be the ones to find their bodies. The request is denied; it's a harsh world out there. But then, in a moment of self confidence, the Korean miners eschew such dependency; they stop their crying, pick up their tools, and, taking matters into their own hands, they defy the mine owners and rescue their compatriots.

After returning from Germany, the newly married Deok-su goes to Vietnam with Dal-gu to make more money (for reasons we find out later). In Vietnam, Korea is still growing and sits between the US (Dal-gu tries to go into a club for American soldiers, and is told by Deok-su, "You can't go in there - that's for Americans!") and Vietnam, which is poorer than Korea and is going through its own civil war that Korea went through twenty years earlier. After seeing a child die in a bombing by the Vietcong, Deok-su writes to his wife, saying that he's glad it's their generation that had to go through this suffering, and not that of their children. At the end of their time in Vietnam, Deok-su and Dal-gu are rescued from the Vietcong by an ROK military unit which is about to blow up a pier and leave, only to find several dozen Vietnamese villagers asking to be taken with them, Deok-su initially refuses to step up and help them, however, only reluctantly agreeing as the Vietcong close in. Clearly this rescue of the Vietnamese refugees is meant to mirror the evacuation at Hungnam that Deok-su went through as a child. This time, however, Korea has grown up enough that it's no longer the victim, but is the one doing the rescuing.

As a result of this rescue, Dal-gu returns home and marries one of the Vietnamese refugees in what is touted as the "first Korean-Vietnamese marriage." While this isn't true, and the story of the relationship between Vietnam and South Korea is a complicated one (as I'll discuss in my next post), it does mirror the way in which Vietnam is seen today. In "The Bride(s) From Hanoi: South Korean Popular Culture, Vietnam and 'Asia' in the New Millennium"(available as a pdf here), Stephen Epstein looks at this relationship through the lens of the reality show "Meet the In-Laws," which inadvertently compares the poor rural life Vietnamese marriage migrants left behind to their new life with a higher standard of living in Korea. As these migrants are always depicted as female, "Meet the In-Laws both mirrors, and further encourages, Korean attitudes of superiority to an Asian hinterland, which are then coded in gendered terms." As well, the requests by these women's families in Vietnam that they be dutiful daughters-in-law or wives "subsumes Vietnam within a traditional Confucian patrilocal framework and acknowledges a position within that hierarchy that reinforces the gendering of Korea as male and leader." Epstein adds that

Since the turn of the millennium one finds increasing evidence of a radical shift in Korea’s gendering of its encounters with the foreign away from the aggressive male intruder, whose presence in Korea has often been symbolized in tropes of rape and violation, as in gijichon (camptown) fiction, to the foreign as the female to be dominated and domesticated within the national fabric.

This accords, I believe, with the depiction in the film of Korea 'growing up,' moving from a state of dependency to a mature member of the world of nations. The final step in this process is healing the psychological wounds of past trauma, in Deok-su's case the loss of family members during the evacuation of Hungnam. As previously mentioned, in 1983 KBS broadcast the TV show, "Reuniting Separated Families," planning only to do a single broadcast, but when it proved successful it continued for over four months and led to the reunion of over 10,000 separated families (episodes can be watched here). In an incredibly emotional scene, Deok-su is finally reunited with a lost family member, and in the present, remembering this event as presented in a flashback, he is finally able to let go of the past and move on.

Near the end of the film, there's a birthday party where it's learned that Deok-su had taught his five-year-old granddaughter to sing "굳세어라 금순아 (Be Strong, Geumsun)," a trot song about the evacuation of Heungnam, which horrifies her parents, who wonder why he would teach her such a sad song. Deok-su retreats to his room to be alone, and the shot of his apartment from outside, showing two windows, one in which his wife, children, and grandchildren celebrate happily, and the other in which Deok-su weeps alone, remembering the past, visually summarizes the divide between generations. Korea has grown into an adult, developed into a modern nation, but the film admonishes the younger generation for forgetting the struggles along the way. At the same time, however, the way in which Deok-su "moves on" and lets go of the past involves him giving in to a redevelopment project, so the film both criticizes the materialism of the present and gives in to it.

Interestingly, criticisms of the film for being conservative miss the fact that it presents Korea as being cosmopolitan. While it portrays Korea's relationship with different nations, it also portrays how those relations (and others) have changed the make-up of Korean society. When teenagers make fun of a South Asian migrant worker, Deok-su defends him and criticizes the teens, precisely because he himself was once a migrant worker, in Germany. Not only that, the Migrant worker says that because he's lived in Korea for some time, he's Korean too, which is certainly not a conservative statement. Deok-su's best friend marries a Vietnamese woman, echoing the marriage migration occurring in Korea today. And his lost and rediscovered sibling is married to a white American man, and, in a montage of the years passing, is shown present at a family dinner, with no fuss made about his presence.

In my next post I'll look more closely at the historical events the film depicted and at how the film followed or strayed from the facts. Despite certain omissions, and despite its melodramatic excess, and narrative shortcomings, "Ode To My Father" is well acted, and portrays often-forgotten historical moments as stepping stones to Korea's emergence as a modern, confident, and inclusive nation, though perhaps one which could stand to remember the difficult path taken along the way.

Brian Myers on 'Subverted Engagement' with North Korea

At NKNews.org, Brian Myers argues that engagement with North Korea isn't subverting that country at all - it's subverting the West.

To which points I get the answer: “Okay, but it can’t hurt. Worth a try, eh?” Actually, when engagement makes money for the regime, and treats Pyongyangites to the spectacle of Americans bowing before statues, it does more to strengthen the status quo than to weaken it. In my book that’s a negative. But I would rather focus here on the near-unanimous assumption that in any “subversive engagement,” we will naturally be the subverting party. This complacency reflects the deep contempt for North Korean intelligence that one finds across the commentariat.

The entire article is worth reading. Being Canadian, I had to laugh at this, though:

Typical of the media response was an article in Maclean’s on how Rodman’s Canadian minder, one of the two grinning white men in the photos and clips, was able to make friends with Kim Jong Un. Judging from the tone of the magazine piece, interviewer and interviewee are equally proud of this attainment, as if it reflected a quintessentially Canadian gift for getting along with everyone.

The Macleans article in question is here.

The decision to prolong the Korean War and revisionist history

Much of modern Korean history painted from a revisionist point of view (notably that of Bruce Cumings in English, and National Liberation (민족 해방) faction of the Korean left in Korean) have painted the US as responsible for the Korean war, or for intervening in a civil war, or just responsible for Korea's woes generally ("The U.S. has committed barbaric and unpardonable crimes against our race for over 100 years," as seen here or in WWII Japanese propaganda). The idea that the Korean War was only a civil war was undone by the scholarship of  Kathryn Weathersby who found in the Soviet archives that Stalin had given Kim Il-sung permission to attack South Korea. In a recent RAS lecture, she looked at how the Soviets and Chinese prolonged the war:

Once China entered the Korean War in October 1950 and saved the DPRK from extinction, the North Korean leadership had little say in how the war was run. The Chinese took over day-to-day management of the fighting and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had the final voice on all important decisions. As a result, when Stalin decided in January 1951 to prolong the war for two to three years to tie down American forces in Korea while the Soviets and East Europeans rearmed, the North Koreans were forced to acquiesce, even though it meant subjecting their country to complete destruction from US bombing.

It can be difficult to hear at times (turn up the volume) but here is the lecture:



If the pro-North NL leftists and revisionists were to accept the fact that it was the Soviets and Chinese who prolonged the war which left the North in ruins, it might help to lessen anti-Americanism (which, though it's not manifest at the moment, is often latent). This is also interesting:

After Stalin died in March 1953, the Communist side finally agreed to an armistice. Yet the North Koreans resented the armistice, since it left the country divided. Furthermore, the North Koreans resented the Russians and the Chinese for prolonging the war by sacrificing the Korean people. Since then, North Koreans have believed that the rest of the world owes their country ongoing reparations. Even today, they often regard foreign aid as reparations.

While I'm not very sympathetic to the North, that might actually explain the North's attitudes towards negotiations with the outside world and make them seem less 'crazy.'

Also on the topic of revisionist history is this impressive lecture by Dr. In-ho Lee, former ambassador to Russia:

In this 2006 lecture, which looks at Korean history from the late nineteenth century to the present, Dr. In-ho Lee discusses the attempts by leftist historians to re-write Korean history from their point of view, one in which the U.S. is to blame for Korea's post-liberation trials. She places much blame for this on the anti-communist education of the Park Chung-hee government and its refusal to intellectually engage with communism, which she argues made a generation of young people susceptible to romanticized views of North Korea and communism.

RAS lecture on the mountains of North and South Korea

Tonight Roger Shepherd will be giving a lecture titled "The Baekdu Daegan as One Mountain System" for the Royal Asiatic Society:

The Baekdu Daegan is the biosphere of the entire Korean peninsula. After completing the first-ever photographic documentation of the Baekdu Daegan in both Koreas, Roger Shepherd now ponders whether the Baekdu Daegan has any hope of being shared by both Koreas as a national symbol of homogeneous identity. Further to that; with South Korea vying for the Baekdu Daegan to be a UNESCO world heritage site, what obstacles and opportunities will this submission face in regards to getting the North Koreans on board? Can it be done? His talk will be followed by a slide show featuring his explorative work from DPRK.

Roger Shepherd's previous lecture for the RAS was well worth attending; the results of his trips to photograph the mountains of North Korea can be seen here, and his website is here. Copies of his new 160 page photo book, 'Mountains of the Baekdu Daegan from North and South Korea' will be available; a preview is here.

The lecture will be held at 7:30 pm tonight (Tuesday) in the Residents' Lounge on the 2nd floor of the Somerset Palace in Seoul, which is behind Jogyesa Temple, and is 7,000 won for non-members and free for members. More information can be found here.

Did the Ministry of Defense declare 'Arirang' a subversive song?

From the Kyunghyang Sinmun yesterday:

Ministry of Defense designates 'Arirang,' a song that even President Park loves to sing, a 'subversive song'

The inclusion of the traditional song 'Arirang' on a 'list of subversive songs' maintained by the Ministry of Defense is causing controversy. MBN reported on the 18th that the Ministry of Defense had designated around 50 songs, including Arirang, as subversive songs and directed that they be deleted from Noraebang equipment.

According to the article, of the 50 songs included on the list of subversive songs the Ministry of Defense included mostly songs calling for peace or reunification such as "Our Wish" or "Come the Day," but among these were also included four traditional folk songs, "Arirang," "Nodeul Riverside," "Miryang Arirang," and "Ggaturi Taryeong." As a result, these songs cannot be sung at noraebangs on military bases and even at some commerical noraebangs.

As this has become known it has led to criticism on the internet. Sungshin Women's University professor Seo Kyoung-duk, the Korea promoter who last year led the movement to have Arirang registered with UNESCO as an intangible heritage asset, wrote, "Last year I put a lot of effort into having Arirang registered as part of UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, such as placing one-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, but now that you can't sing it because the Ministry of Defense has designated it a 'subversive song'... I really don't have the words! Anyway, lets have civilians work together to protect Arirang."

The Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying "Other than North Korean songs, the Ministry of Defense has not requested the deletion from noraebang equipment of a group of normal South Korean songs." "Since around 2004, requests could be made by front line commanding officers according to their own judgement for noraebang equipment supplied to bases to have songs removed that are judged to be unsuitable for soldiers to sing." "After this, used noraebang equipment from military bases has been found to have entered the open market without being restored to its original condition."

Prior to this, while watching a performance held in the Blue House Garden titled 'Our flavor and style for cultural prosperity - Arirang,' President Park Geun-hye sang 'Arirang' with singer Kim Jang-hun.

The original MBN TV report is here. So... are we dealing with a heavy handed military here, or irresponsible, sensationalist media? Or a little of both?

While considering that one of the less-than-positive legacies of the current president's father was the destruction of much of the popular culture which is now drawing attention to South Korea (see Mark Russell's essay here, for example), including the banning of songs, widespread arrests of musicians (under the rubric of a 'war on marijuana'), and the destruction of much of the early 1970s rock music scene, it's likely not entirely fair to connect her personally to this story (especially if we take the military at their word and take into account that military units have been asking for songs to be deleted since the Noh Moo-hyun era), even if I might really like to...

(Hat tip to Ami.)

Brian Myers lecture for RAS tonight

Tonight Brian Myers will be giving a lecture titled "Red Herring: North Korea's Juche Myth" for the Royal Asiatic Society:

Foreign observers chuckle at the North Korean personality cult, but when it touts the centrality of Kim Il Sung’s Juche Thought, they see no reason for skepticism. Researchers at top American universities quote from Kim’s colonial-era Juche speeches, which were not “discovered” until the 1970s, as if they were actual historical documents. But Pyongyang-watchers share North Korean tour-guides' reluctance to explain Juche. The standard practice is to breeze through its trite maxims – “man is the master of all things,” etc – before jumping to the real-world policy-making they somehow “translate into.” Thin though it may be, however, outsiders’ knowledge of the humanist pseudo-doctrine is sufficient to function as a cheese-cloth through which they view the reality. An implacable xenophobia rooted in Japanese race-theory is thus misperceived as a philosophically-grounded state-nationalism or patriotism compatible with Marxism-Leninism. In this way the Juche fallacy sustains the misperception of North Korea -- one of the most race-obsessed, most highly militarized countries in world history -- as a last bastion of what the LA Times calls “undiluted communism.” Juche is, in short, the reddest of red herrings. In today’s lecture, Brian Myers will present a preview of his upcoming book, explaining how the regime launched the Juche myth in 1967, how it won the West, and how it continues to serve Pyongyang's interests.

The lecture will be held at 7:30 pm tonight (Tuesday) in the Residents' Lounge on the 2nd floor of the Somerset Palace in Seoul, which is behind Jogyesa Temple, and is 7,000 won for non-members and free for members.

Fundraiser for Daily NK on indiegogo

I've been asked to post about Daily NK's new fundraiser on indiegogo, where they are hoping to raise $10,000:

Daily NK, an acclaimed civil society-based online periodical headquartered in Seoul responsible for breaking major news stories from inside North Korea, is raising funds on Indiegogo towards reconfiguring its website with RWD (Responsive Web Design). The goal: to deliver news-- translated in Korean, Japanese, English, and Chinese -- more effectively across different platforms -- desktop, notebook, tablet, and mobile -- to our growing international audience.

Founded in 2004, Daily NK's staff includes South Korean democracy activists, North Korean defectors, and international researchers. Regularly cited by major international media -- such as The New York Times, China Daily, and the BBC -- the website is also a frequent target for cyber attacks perpetrated by hackers in China and North Korea. Site redesign will also include security upgrades to safeguard the free flow of information.

Fundraiser for Daily NK at Scrooge Pub in Itaewon this Friday

I've been asked to pass along information about the Daily NK fundraiser at Scrooge Pub in Itaewon this Friday:

#NIGHTOUT with Daily NK:
Turn the lights on in the North by empowering media democracy in the South

Daily NK (www.dailynk.com), an acclaimed news periodical reporting on all aspects of modern North Korea and cited by major international media—such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, Al Jazeera, and the BBC—will host a casual community outreach event on Friday, July 5, @ Scrooge Pub in Itaewon from 8PM to 10PM. Organized in concert with the media company’s first-ever crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo, the event seeks to foster face-to-face connections between the Seoul-based staff—including democracy activists, North Korean defectors, and international researchers—and the city’s dynamic international community. #NIGHTOUT will include noted guest speaker Kay Seok from Human Rights Watch and the National Democratic Institute, live music, the launch of the Indiegogo campaign, prizes and more.

VOICE IN THE CROWD—CONVERSATION WITH DAILYNK’S PRESIDENT, PARK INHO: A former student activist who campaigned against South Korea’s authoritarianism but was ultimately betrayed by the untruths the Kim Il Sung regime propagated, President Park will speak about his civil society-based organization’s mission to promote the free flow of information on the Korean Peninsula.

The entrance fee is a 10,000 won donation that includes one free drink.

For more information contact dailynk@dailynk.com or refer to the facebook event page.

Some links related to Korea and WWII

[Update below]

A discussion at the Korean Studies List about why Korea was not bombed by the US during WWII led Bill Streifer, who runs the Flight of the Hog Wild website, to post a WWII bombing target map of Korea. It makes quite clear just how much Japan concentrated heavy industry and power generation in northern Korea.

The story of the flight of the Hog Wild B-29 bomber, about which Streifer is writing a book, is an interesting one. The bomber set out in August 1945 to deliver relief supplies to the allied POWs being held in Hungnam (now in North Korea) when it was shot down by Soviet planes - arguably the first shots of the cold war. He also tells the story of Operation Eagle, in which an American C-47 landed at Yeouido Air Base on August 18, 1945 in order to check in on the POWs in Seoul, and the rather interesting reception they got from the Japanese (download pdf here, starts on page 13).

On a related topic, the Korea Studies list also mentioned an article by Yong-ho Ch'oe which I found at Japan Focus titled 'Korean Prisoners-of-War in Hawaii During World War II and the Case of US Navy Abduction of Three Korean Fishermen' The story of Korean labourers captured on Pacific islands (in which at times only ten percent survived the battles which took place), of three Korean deserters from the Japanese army in Burma who joined the OSS, and of the three Korean fishermen abducted off the coast of Korea by a US submarine makes for interesting reading; the editorializing, not so much.

He actually compares the abduction of the three fishermen to North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens:

Long before North Korea's kidnapping, the United States committed a similar act, equally outrageous and reprehensible. The American abduction of three Korean fishermen deserves no less condemnation by the American public. [...] They too were innocent victims of immoral and illegal acts perpetrated in the name of war.

Japanese civilians who were kidnapped and held for decades - or for the rest of their lives - in North Korea during peacetime and three fishermen kidnapped and held in a POW camp in Hawaii for six months during the biggest war in history? What an apt comparison!

And also on the WWII side of things was last night's RAS lecture by Czech ambassador Jaroslav Olša, jr. about Han Hŭng-su, who spent the early 1930s studying in Japan, and late 1930s and much of the 1940s studying in Europe before returning to North Korea and being purged shortly after the war:

His life and work made a lasting impact on South and North Korean archeology as well as on the study of Korean history and literature in Czechoslovakia and the knowledge of Korean literature in German-speaking countries in Europe. Multi-talented scholar, polyglot speaking at least six languages and author of numerous books and articles published in Korean, German, Czech, Polish and English, he is now being slowly rediscovered.

It was a fascinating lecture, and Ambassador Olša was an engaging speaker; I'll post a link to the video once it's available.

[Update]

Here's a map I made years ago of the cities the US bombed in Japan during WWII and the percentage of city area destroyed (sourced from 'The Fog of War'):

Controversy over the Gwangju Uprising

Today is the 33rd anniversary of the crushing of the Gwangju Uprising. On this day in 1980, ROK special forces units retook the city from its citizens, who had held it for six days after forcing the military out on May 21.





More photos of that day can be found in this post (and film of the aftermath of the battle that day is shown in the first two minutes of the 1996 film 'A Petal,' which can be seen here. I've written quite a few posts about the uprising, including a brief timeline, the violence on the first day, the escalation of violence over the first three days, forcing the military out of the city, as well as an analysis of US news reports from May 22 and the death toll.

I've also looked at more personal stories related to the uprising, such as the memories of a nurse, the memories of a photographer, and the story of a soldier. The single post I'm happiest with is likely this one, about the death and memorialization of a high school girl named Park Geum-hui who was killed during the uprising.

A bibliography of books in English about the uprising is here, and I've also looked at the background of the situation in 1979 leading up to Park's assassination and Chun Doo-hwan's 12.12 coup, both of which, essentially, led to the uprising.

The big new this year was that two right wing TV networks interviewed North Korean defectors who claim the Gwangju Uprising was the work of North Korean special forces. This created quite a reaction, as a Joongang Ilbo article titled "TV shows tarnish Gwangju history" describes:

After the programs were broadcast, roughly 17,000 comments were posted on Ilbe, a far-right online Web site that many young people visit, denouncing the May 18 uprising. [...]

Most users ridiculed the activists and the victims of the uprising, by describing them as hongeo, or Korean name of skate, a fish and regional specialty of the South Jeolla region. The fish is red in color and is often used as a nickname for South Jeolla people when accusing them of being a “commie,” or “red.”

Politicians and civic activists protested the programs and the comments of the Ilbe Web site.

You Seung-hee, a Democratic Party lawmaker, issued a statement on Sunday saying: “The actions of the so-called general-programming cable channels, distorting the history of the protest against the military coup, which is part of the identity of South Korea, are no different than the acts of Japan that distort history [regarding their colonial rule during World War II and territorial claims].”

Kim Si-won, an 18-year-old high school student, also staged a one-man protest in central Seoul. “The Ilbe members, who deny the spirit of the May 18 Democratization Movement, are not entitled to be citizens of this country.”

Kim Seo-jung, a media studies professor at Sungkonghoe University, said “[TV Chosun and Channel A] just ran the programs to get ratings without checking the facts about the Gwangju uprising, which is an important incident in Korean society. They failed to keep their responsibility as media for uncovering the truth.”

Imagine that. The Donga Ilbo - owner of Channel A - has an editorial in English which attempts to deflect blame, saying "some TV programs and Internet sites aroused disputes by arguing that North Korean soldiers intervened the uprising [after a] North Korean defector appeared on a TV program last week". Cute. [The article is worth reading, however.] I'm not sure if this is really necessary, however:

“It is a serious misdeed that some television programs deliberately distorted the truth of the May 18 uprising,” Oh Jae-yiel, head of the May 18 Memorial Foundation, said on Sunday. “After evaluating the response from the government, we will take all available legal action.”

This Donga Ilbo article also describes battles between leftists and rightists (or 'May 18 deniers') to have the uprising memorialized by UNESCO. It also mentions that

UNESCO agreed to publish a world human rights textbook, which will feature 10 cases, including records on France`s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, Germany`s dismantlement of the Berlin Wall, Poland`s 21 Demands of Gdansk, and documentations on the May 18 incident. The first of its kind, the human rights textbook will be used as reference material for students worldwide.

The Joongang Daily describes the content of the shows, which "featured interviewees that said North Korean agents secretly penetrated into the South in 1980 and pretended to be civilians in order to cause social turmoil and the collapse of the government in the South."

TV Chosun broadcast a talk show on May 13 featuring a North Korean defector, identified as Im Cheon-yong. Im said he was a former North Korean military officer of a special force unit that was involved in the Gwangju uprising in 1980.

“A battalion composed of 600 North Korean soldiers penetrated into [Gwangju],” Im said. “It was North Korean guerillas who occupied the South Jeolla Provincial Office at the time.”

Another North Korean defector then appeared on Channel A last Wednesday and made a similar claim. The defector, who used the pseudonym Kim Myeong-guk, said he was one of several North Korean soldiers sent to Gwangju during the uprising. Unlike Im, his face was blurred, apparently to protect his identity.

“On May 21, 1980, soldiers of the special forces unit arrived on shore near Gwangju by ship,” Kim said. “We pretended to be Gwangju civilian forces and even attacked the South’s government forces together.

“Among the North Korean soldiers who participated in the uprising, some were promoted to be generals in the North later,” he said.

As the Joongang mentions,

The allegation that North Korea was possibly involved in the Gwangju movement was first raised by the Chun Doo Hwan administration in 1980.

On May 21, 1980, Lee Hui-sung, then-Army Chief of Staff for the Chun administration, spread leaflets that said, “The agitation is being led by [North Korean] spy agents and rebellious gangsters.”

However, in 1995, during questioning by the prosecution, Lee reversed his words, saying, “At the time, that allegation was just a suspicion. It was a bit exaggerated.”

Many military experts also say that the possibility of North Korean agents’ involvement is highly unlikely, as Gwangju was under thorough military surveillance by martial law at the time.

If Martial Law Command believed North Koreans had organized the rebellion, they certainly didn't let on in the statement they made to citizens 33 years ago after special forces secured the city:

The military has waited patiently ever since evacuating the city on May 21. We promised the citizens' representatives not to come back in, provided certain conditions were respected. They were not respected. Coming back into the city became inevitable, because the scum of society and criminal elements organized as so-called "citizens' army". They broke the law. The army has completed its mission successfully. Citizens, come forward. Order has been restored.

As the Korean notes in his post at the Marmot's Hole, even conservative pundit Cho Gap-je called the assertions made on the program unbelievable. Apparently, Cho was there (something I didn't know) as a journalist, and he notes that no journalists, Korean or foreign, or citizens, ever spoke of North Koreans being in the city. He also notes that only 23 soldiers died during the uprising (13 of those in friendly fire incidents), and argues that, had North Korean special forces been involved, surely more soldiers would have died.

The aforementioned battle over UNESCO memorialization of 518 also mentions that

some conservative groups in South Korea suggested that “The May 18 Gwangju incident was an armed revolt triggered by some 600 special forces from North Korea. Those who massacred Gwangju citizens are North Korean soldiers, not South Korean martial troops.

So it wasn't the ROK army who killed civilians in Gwangju, it was DPRK soldiers. Welcome to cuckooland, everyone.

If we remember this -

“On May 21, 1980, soldiers of the special forces unit arrived on shore near Gwangju by ship,” Kim said. “We pretended to be Gwangju civilian forces and even attacked the South’s government forces together.

- by May 21 the die had been cast, so to speak, regarding the uprising. Arguably the one of the most radical citizen actions - mass action by taxi and bus drivers who drove downtown, occupied city space and made it much more difficult for the special forces to control the streets - took place on the evening of May 20. In fact, even before citizens armed themselves after ROK special forces opened fire on crowds in front of the Provincial Hall on May 21, a civilian rebellion was already taking place, which I looked at in detail here. In that post I quote paratrooper Kim Yong-jin:

While advancing, a major, an operations staff member of the 3rd Brigade, held up a gun shouting: "I will shoot you to death if you retreat," so that we reached the area near Kwangju Station in terror. When we arrived at Kwangju station, soldiers were standing in a single line in front of the train station building, shooting ceaselessly, and near the fountain buses and trucks carrying citizens had driven into the fountain while charging at the soldiers. One sergeant, a vehicle driver of the 3rd Airborne Brigade, died after being run over by a truck, and about 20 citizens were abandoned near the fountain, drenched in blood.

By the night of the 20th, citizens were charging at special forces lines with vehicles, and, in the case of the confrontation in front of Gwangju Station, opening fire on citizens. As I described in the aforementioned post:

Many of the demonstrators that had been arrested over the past three days were held in a gym at Chosun University, where they were being beaten regularly. Hearing of this, 3000 demonstrators headed to the university to free them, using buses to charge the gate. The soldiers successfully defended the university, but had to use hand grenades to do so. By daybreak the paratroopers could be found only on the two university campuses and at the provincial hall.

So, even before these 600 North Korean soldiers slipped past martial law command into Gwangju (perhaps on the back of the winged horse, Chollima?), Gwangju's citizens, without using guns, had forced the military into three strongholds throughout the city. The work of the liberating the city from the military had already almost been completed by May 21, and the military was set to exit the provincial hall (and the downtown area) before it opened fire on the crowds. If you look at the gradual progression of violence over the first three days, it shouldn't be surprising that once the military opened fire on crowds of civilians on the afternoon of May 21, the citizens would arm themselves to complete the task they had nearly finished. And as the military was forced out, I'm sure someone in power was thinking, 'Giving military training to every male over the age of twenty seemed like such a good idea at the time...'

Bandow on the US-ROK alliance and why it should end

In a recent op-ed in Forbes titled "South Korea: Close Friend Of The U.S., And A Defense Welfare Queen," Doug Bandow questions whether the US-ROK alliance should continue. Referring to Park Geun-hye's planned policy of 'trustpolitik' with the North, he writes:

This policy obviously is no bargain for America: the South underwrites the military of the nation against which the U.S. is prepared to go to war. In return, Washington receives marginal assistance from the ROK in conflicts the U.S. should not be fighting.

The strategy looks equally dubious for the South. Complained Edward Luttwak, “South Korea has matched the North’s bellicosity with its own strategic perversity: It remains obsessed with an utterly unthreatening Japan and has been purchasing air power to contend with imagined threats from Tokyo as opposed to the real ones just north of the demilitarized zone. Seoul is simply unwilling to acquire military strength to match its vastly superior economy.”

Even so, the decision should be Seoul’s alone—if America was not defending the South. Washington has reason to object to being asked to defend the ROK from an enemy which the ROK is subsidizing. If Seoul responds that the subsidies don’t matter because the DPRK poses no threat, then U.S. military support is unnecessary.

Read the rest here.

Update on the 'wanted teacher' case

On Friday it was announced that an American wanted for sexual assaulting a minor several times in the US had been working in Korea as a native speaking instructor in places like elementary schools for eight years (or nine years, or ten years, according to the Seoul Sinmun). A news search at Naver now turns up over 60 articles or news reports on this case.

Over at ROK Drop, someone claiming to know the teacher who was arrested left several comments about the case. The first is here, and a second (and and following) comment is here. The commenter claims that the suspect was involved in a bitter divorce and his ex-wife accused him of abusing their three year old daughter. He also wrote that he contacted the teacher's wife and she said he'd already been deported. Being the internet, who knows if it's true, but it makes for interesting reading.

TV Chosun did a report on this case, and in it the teacher is interviewed by police and he says, "I was accused, and they dropped the case. I didn’t know that there was a case. I did not know there was a warrant." 

TV Chosun also provides some helpful images:

It doesn't quite compare to the Munhwa Ilbo's cartoon, though:

Just for fun, here are some more shadow images of Americans - in this case from a 1990 North Korean comic book titled "Sick and Rotten World" (which depicts the world outside of North Korea to be a scary, scary place. This is part of the "NamJoseon (South Korea), Death Zone" section which portrays the dangers of US soldiers:

I love how their hats make them appear to have horns, especially in the last panel. This is similar to WWII era Japanese depictions of Anglo-Americans.

Here's an evil American having his way with a Korean woman:

'Their true, foul, beastly nature'

Note the similarities with this image (again):

"The entire world accuses the US Army of unpardonable barbarity

against south Korean women."

And back to this again:

Golly, that would make a great T-shirt. Or perhaps putting it on large banners to hang in the arrival lounge at Incheon airport would be better?