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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:04 am Post subject: Korea's bid for truth and reconciliation |
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"If all investigations are properly conducted, Korea can be born as a model country for human rights," says Lee Young Jo, one of three standing commissioners."
Well you certainly can't accuse Mr. Lee of lacking ambition and optimism...
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Korea's bid for truth and reconciliation
By Donald Kirk, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Fri Mar 3, 3:00 AM ET
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - Near the notorious former headquarters of the Korean
Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), investigators pore over a turbulent historical record - abuses of political prisoners, collaboration with Japanese occupiers, massacres of civilians in the Korean War.
The most ambitious effort so far to document who did what to whom in the past century, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up late last year, has begun to delve into a wide range of issues, beginning with betrayal during the anti-Japanese revolt of March 1, 1919, memorialized here as a national holiday.
"If all investigations are properly conducted, Korea can be born as a model country for human rights," says Lee Young Jo, one of three standing commissioners.
"If we have any lessons to learn from the past," he adds, "we should prevent similar things from taking place again."
Under a law enacted nearly a year ago, teams are reexamining collaboration during the Japanese colonial era (1910-45). They also are probing such episodes as the mass killing of civilians before and during the Korean War, and the torture and killing of political prisoners by KCIA interrogators under Park Chung Hee, who seized power in 1961, and his successor, Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, who came to power in a coup after Park's assassination in 1979.
It's hoped that this commission, named after one established by Nelson Mandela in post-apartheid South Africa, can come to more definitive conclusions than a dozen other panels formed in recent years to right past wrongs.
With nearly 200 people on its staff, it's the largest of any of them, has the most sweeping objectives - and is the first to begin operations during the presidency of
Roh Moo-Hyun, who succeeded President Kim Dae Jung three years ago.
The real question, though, is whether all the soul-searching, the scrutiny of records, and interviews with perpetrators and victims can placate embittered critics on all sides. A corollary question is why none of the plethora of commissions is asking about human rights abuses in
North Korea.
Kim Dong Choon, another standing commissioner and author of a lengthy study on killing of civilians during the Korean War, acknowledges "divisions in our society about North Korea" but says, "I have no idea about violations in North Korea."
The divisions in Korean society are mirrored inside the commission. Mr. Lee says he believes that South Koreans will have to come to grips with what goes on there in view of the horrifying tales told by increasing numbers of North Koreans who have escaped to China and now are refugees here.
"This government is very reluctant to bring up the matter of human rights in North Korea for fear of souring relationships with the North," he observes. "To be born as a model of human rights,
South Korea should pay more attention to North Korea, too."
A former student activist at Seoul National University, Kim says that Koreans must first settle historical issues and promises to "try every means" to find the facts about "several massacres, including those by Korean military police and North Korean and American forces" during the Korean War.
Lee, who earned his doctorate in government at Harvard University and is on leave from his post as a professor at Kyunghee University, says, "Nobody will oppose the idea of settling past wrongs, but some think there are too many commissions."
Most of the other commissions, while not as large and powerful, remain in existence. The panel investigating the Kwangju massacre of May 1980 - when soldiers responded brutally to demonstrators for democracy - has won several hundred dollars each for the bereaved families of more than 200 young people slaughtered when soldiers recaptured the city.
Unlike the others, however, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is independent of any agency - including the Blue House, the center of presidential power, even though President Roh appointed the commission president. Roh, whose base is left-of-center, endorsed the idea of the commission in response to leftist demands for a thorough probe into practices that still send tremors of fear through society here.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS), as the KCIA is now known, has promised to cooperate, as have the defense ministry and the national police. The NIS has apologized for acts of torture that resulted in the deaths of as many 100 people during the presidencies of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan.
Earlier this month, in a landmark ruling, an appeals court upheld a ruling by a lower court to pay $1.8 million to the family of a Seoul National University professor who died while in 1973 while interrogators grilled him.
The NIS apology came years after the KCIA had claimed that the professor, "suffering from a guilty conscience," had leapt from a window in the KCIA office building after having confessed he was "a communist North Korean spy." A judge in the final ruling said it was "unpardonable" that "the truth was systematically covered up and a torture victim was labeled an enemy of the state." |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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I had my first discussion with someone who favored the idea of starting these investigations back in 2001 because of some tension in our office. Kim favored the creation of the commission and used the example of our co-worker Lee to explain why.
Lee's grandfather started the family business during the Japanese occupation. Since then the family has given up the original business and moved into other fields. Kim says it is unfair for the Lee family to be wealthy because of how they got their start and deserve to have their bank accounts emptied. The grandchildren should be punished for what their grandfather did (however, Kim admitted he didn't know what Grandpa Lee did or didn't do).
As far as I could tell, this attitude of Kim's was just the old 'if you are rich you must be guilty of something'. Far leftist nonsense.
Other aspects of the commission are healthy. Restoring the reputations of people unfairly arrested during the dictatorships can't be anything but good.
Given the present government's policy of not saying or doing anything that might upset the Norks makes me leary of the Commission investigating massacres during the war. Will it really investigate the atrocities done by North Korean soldiers? I'm dubious.
I'm also anticipating the Commission's behavior before elections. There is enormous potential for an 'October Surprise'.
Anyway, the Commission should be worth several years worth of entertainment. [/code] |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 6:37 pm Post subject: |
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The truth? They can't handle the truth!
Those face-saving buddhists! |
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