Liberation from Japan: 80 years in the rearview mirror
Aug. 15 was the 80th anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial control. How does it look now in the rearview mirror? What have we learned?
As a historian of the Joseon dynasty, I cannot but look at what went wrong and what led to the Japanese takeover. As I think of it, I remember the folk saying about the pen and the sword. We are taught that the “pen is mightier than the sword,” but the paradox of that saying is that everyone knows the sword is more powerful. Yet we also know that — and this is the key — in the long run, the pen is truly more powerful. Korean history bears this out. In the short term, for temporary gains, the Japanese sword was more powerful, but in today’s world, Korea has caught up to Japan in all significant measures, and the pen is becoming mightier than the sword.
Why is Japan the sword and Korea the pen? How far back does that cultural truth go? The answer is that it goes back well into history, a thousand years or more! In the early Goryeo period, in the 10th century, Korea set a course away from decentralized government, away from the hostilities of feudalism, toward a centralized government. Crucially, recruitment to public office in Korea was not by power or might — the sword — but by an examination system — the pen. It was actually a brush back in those days. Korea did not invent this system of recruitment, which was borrowed from China, but they perfected it and practiced peaceful government far better. China lost control of its own government when it was conquered by the Mongols and the Manchus, but Korea had a centralized government with recruitment by exam for one thousand years.
In the book of world records, this should be recognized as the longest peaceful reign with a single government process in the history of the world. Yes, there were two dynasties over that period, Goryeo and Joseon (918-1392 and 1392-1910), but administratively they were really one dynasty with an uninterrupted aristocracy in control for that entire thousand-year period. Only the royal family and the location of the capital changed; in all other ways — aristocracy and governmental organization — it functioned as one period.
Korea has had a thousand-year tradition of selecting government officials through this examination system — governing by the pen. This system runs deep and manifested an educational system as its essential underpinning, even developing printing technology that could produce sufficient books to sustain high educational standards. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the role of woodblock printing played a key role, too.
During this time, what was happening in Japan? It was not the development of the brush. There was no centralized state, no exam system, no educational system, no printing technology. Instead, we see the flourishing of feudalism and rule by the sword, by the samurai.
Neither situation was democratic or modern — we see naive criticisms of pre-modern states as bad in this way or that, but such criticisms are unfair. Yet to compare two pre-modern states is fair, and in that regard, Korea was vastly superior to Japan. Korea abandoned feudalism one thousand years before Japan. In the Japanese occupation of Korea, Japan even claimed superiority and accused Korea of being under-developed. Yet it was feudalism and the samurai that were underdeveloped. Korea was far more sophisticated, cultured and civilized than Japan.
Temporarily, the sword seems to have more power. But in the long run, it is the civilized culture of the pen that will come out on top.
The samurai conquered Korea with their swords in 1910, but after 35 short years, the naked power of the sword was destroyed, and the pen re-emerged as more powerful. It’s interesting that today’s Japan has adopted Korean-style attitudes, especially with emphasis on study and the educational system. They’ve traded the sword for the pen.
Historical attitudes die hard. However, surveys in both Japan and Korea show that the younger generation generally has a higher opinion of the other country than the older generation. There is hope for a brighter, upbeat future.
As the Japanese colonial experience disappears in the rearview mirror, there is hope for relationships of mutual respect.
Mark Peterson (frogoutsidethewell@gmail.com) is Professor Emeritus, retired from teaching Korean Studies at Brigham Young University in Utah.