By Charles Kim
As you may see, the term lynching probably derived from the name Charles Lynch, a justice of the peace who administered rough justice in Virginia. Lynching was originally a system of punishment used by whites against African American slaves. However, whites that protested against this were also in danger of being lynched. On 7th November, 1837, for example, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the editor of the Alton Observer, was killed by a white mob after he had published articles criticizing lynching and advocating the abolition of slavery.
In this vortex of lynching, in 1898, a woman wrote to President William McKinley asking him to take action against the lynching of blacks that was taking place in the southern states, as follows: “For nearly twenty years lynching crimes have been committed and permitted by this Christian nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 to 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless. Statistics show that nearly 10,000 American citizens have been lynched in the past 20 years. To our appeals for justice the stereotyped reply has been the government could not interfere in a state matter.”
This woman is Ida Wells, who was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi in the United States. She witnessed three of her friends hanged in Memphis and began to investigate lynching and other violence against blacks. She found that many blacks had been lynched without even a trial after being accused of a crime, and that others had been lynched for no apparent reason at all. This made her decide to expose such killings and to establish laws against lynching.
At all events, thanks to a lot of those efforts made by Ida Well together with other anti-lynching campaigners of the whole world scene for the abolition of lynch law, a hell of innocent people’s lives were spared throughout the world for the sake of time’s standpoint in history, I suppose.
But in Korea, we are moving the clock’s hand back down to the boondocks of barbarism of an eye for an eye. Recently we have seen a very intriguing picture in Korea, which reminds us of her efforts against lynching. As you see, there was a brawl between a prince and nobody-at-alls at a watering hole in southern Seoul. No sooner had the prince’s father heard about it than he was in a mad scramble trying to get to the spot with a bunch of his bodyguards armed with steel pipes and stun guns and something like that. He then took those involved in that quarrel away to a secluded spot out of town, which proved to be a construction site near Cheonggye Mountain in southern Seoul. Unfortunately enough, however, he didn’t make himself satisfied with some other pals he beat save the very guy who had beaten the apple of his eye in the wee hours of the same day. With all that pent-up emotions of anger and frustration brewing up at the moment, he made a bee line for the place where those guys work for a living with the gangster-looking bodyguards in order to get even with ‘the him’ for the sake of the completion of ‘due process’ for directing a drama titled ‘An-eye-for-an-eye Revenge.’ And the rest is history.
At one point in American history, even the American government turned a blind eye to lynching while keeping in mind that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and all that." Ida Well must have been so long distressed that she did eventually write to President.
In this regard, we are an awfully lucky people, by all means, compared to American people of those dark days. It is in just a less than two months after that lynching came up that the whole investigation gets under way. In a sense, I feel it’s too early in the light that Ida Well protested against lynching of ‘nearly 20 years’ with no echoes from the government, as shown in her letter to President. So, as far as that kind of thing is concerned, I guess, it could have been handled way over 20 years later here in Korea.
Even so, what if the father of a prince would be released in one piece after all this fine kettle of fish? If nothing is to happen to him as usual as happening to a money guy, I think it will be much better for justice to let go of him and help him move toward another showdown with the watering-hole side. Then, you could call it a showdown between a gang of alcohol and a gang of money. You could save some money for a movie of gangster variety as well. But, sadly enough, the suspense won’t be killing you, for you have neither seen nor heard anything beat money. It’s all about a money-talking world.
I think it is very significant that we should ask ourselves this question, though. “Is an eye for an eye a way to run a civilized justice system?” Take your time. You don’t have to make a hasty decision. Time is ample. If you try to hang in there a little more, you can find a minute for saying yes or no, sooner or later, not 20 years later.
The writer is manager at the Dept. of English Contents Research of Publishing Basic & English Teacher at E. M. English Academy.