The Korea Times

Letting go of unification

By Kyung Moon HwangThis will seem odd, but last Friday's extraordinary summit in Panmunjeom, which produced a formal “Declaration for Peace, Prosperity, and Unification of the Korean Peninsula,” showed that unification is actually not a goal, nor perhaps should it be. Unification, considered a moral imperative by Koreans on both sides for generations, remains a pipe dream. We tend to forget that it has been 110 years since Koreans governed themselves as a unified country. This is longer than even the near-century of Mongol domination back in the 13th and 14th centuries. Hence the “norm” of an autonomous, unified Korea is hard to fathom, in spite of the sentiments accompanying all the political theater at the summit.Rather, according to the formal proclamations from the Panmunjeom summit, the more urgent and meaningful goal would be to realize a peace regime on the peninsula by dropping the hostilities and raising North Korea's economic conditions. Meanwhile, the obligatory calls for unification would remain ceremonial and general, even abstract.This downplayin

Apr 30, 2018By Kyung Moon Hwang

Comfort women agreement was always political maneuver

Hwang Kyung-moonBy Hwang Kyung-moon The findings of the South Korean government task force on the December 2015 “comfort women” agreement with Japan confirmed what observers like me suspected all along: the accord was first and foremost an expedient political move, not a sincerely thorough effort to resolve a complicated historical conflict. It therefore never had a chance to become a lasting “irreversible” solution.It turns out that then-President Park Geun-hye was directly involved, even against the advice of some of her diplomats, in pushing for some kind of deal before the end of 2015. The task force investigation suggests strongly that this insistence on the timing compromised South Korea’s negotiating position.When task force chairman Oh Tai-kyu was interviewed on JTBC news on Wednesday evening, he and the interviewer seemed puzzled by Park’s eagerness to finalize the agreement in the 50th anniversary year of the 1965 treaty that normalized diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan. The significance of a possible comfort women agreem

Jan 1, 2018By Hwang Kyung-moon

Comfort women agreement was always political maneuver

Roh Moo-hyun's ultimate victory

By Kyung Moon HwangFifteen years ago this week, in mid-December of 2002, I came to Seoul for an academic conference and witnessed a remarkable event, the election of Roh Moo-hyun as president of South Korea. Roh’s victory was extraordinary for many reasons, including a sudden turn of events the day before the election that further reduced his chances. His presidency likewise became historically significant in ways that were difficult to detect at the time. Moreover, Roh’s shocking suicide in 2009, a year after he left office amid an investigation of him for alleged corruption, appeared as a tragic end to not only his life but his causes. But while it’s still a bit early for grand historical judgments, the past decade of developments suggests that Roh has actually won.This assessment comes not just from the fact that his protege and chief of staff, Moon Jae-in, was elected president this year while championing Roh’s agenda and approach, but that the enveloping mood and direction of the country have come to reflect Roh’s aspirations. These include a fierce

Dec 13, 2017By Kyung Moon Hwang

Recycling names for Korea

By Kyung Moon HwangA country’s name naturally reflects its history. For example, there are about a half-dozen official monikers for Germany in different regions and languages, a sign of Germany’s long and fractured existence before it became a unified state in the 19th century.Korea’s story is somewhat different. With the exception of the Mongolian word, “Solongos,” which also carries a fascinating history, there are three basic names for Korea around the world: Goryeo (Korea), Joseon, and Hanguk. Over its long history many different expressions have been used, both by neighbors and among Koreans, but these three have become standardized in recent times.Even more interesting is that each of these three terms was revived from an earlier historical period and, in the modern era, underwent further modification in line with political shifts. The recycling of words for Korea thus shows both the civilization’s longevity and its people’s awareness of their shared past.The oldest of the three names is probably “Joseon,” whi

Nov 15, 2017By Kyung Moon Hwang

Looking back at Great Korean Empire

By Kyung Moon HwangLast week marked the 120th anniversary of the ceremony that founded the Great Korean Empire, or “Daehan Jeguk.” For this occasion the Seoul city government sponsored a re-enactment of the ritual, centered on the monarch Gojong, who proclaimed his territory an empire and himself its emperor in mid-October of 1897.Over the past couple of decades the common perspective on the Korean Empire, which ended when Japan annexed Korea as its colony in 1910, has changed almost completely. Historians, followed by the public at large, have revived the reputation of the Empire, which had long been derided as the last breath of the dying Joseon Dynasty and beset by disorder, corruption and mismanagement.It is easy to see why the Japanese condemned the Korean Empire: Such a narrative of hopeless backwardness and dangerous weakness justified Japan’s takeover, which was legitimized in terms of regional security and urgent reform, as if Japan was forced to intervene. But many Koreans back then and long afterward also shared this negative view; it was the Empire, afte

Oct 18, 2017By Kyung Moon Hwang

Toppling tyrants

By Kyung Moon HwangWe know things have gotten really bad in inter-Korean relations when the South’s government very openly reveals the formation of a special “decapitation” squadron targeting the North Korean leader. Such units have always existed in some form, probably, but the point now is to make an impression on such a mercurial, absolutist dictator, as every other approach appears to have failed.How to shake some sense into, or better, get rid of a tyrant whose behavior seems not just unpredictable or bizarre, but frightening, has been a universal problem throughout human history. In hindsight, a well-timed assassination at times would have produced an undeniably better outcome. Who could argue against the notion, for example, that killing Adolf Hitler sometime in the 1930s would have prevented much of the carnage around the world in the 1940s?In Korea’s past as well, this challenge arose alongside systematic rules on political legitimacy. Until the 20th century, as in most other places, sovereignty almost always lay in a hereditary monarch, whose supreme

Sep 20, 2017By Kyung Moon Hwang

Monuments are not untouchable

By Kyung Moon HwanMade of stone or metal, and often larger than life, monuments are meant to be permanent. The most celebrated ones are public memorials, built by governments and placed in communal spaces such as parks or in front of courthouses, presidential mansions, or other official buildings. Indeed the most massive, elaborate, or decorative government buildings act as monuments themselves.This should not mean, however, that monuments are held as eternally sacred symbols. They reflect the particular historical circumstances of their creation, and their meanings can change over time.In the U.S., this theme has come to the forefront following the recent violence sparked by white supremacists, fascists and neo-Nazis who rallied against the removal of a particular statue. The statue is one of dozens around the country commemorating Robert E. Lee, the military commander of the Confederate States of America, the name for those territories that seceded from the United States to start the American Civil War in 1861.Although a shocking number of Americans still refuse to acknowledge

Aug 30, 2017By Kyung Moon Hwang

Korea, US and General Sherman incident

By Kyung Moon HwangSensible people around the world these days are wondering which of the two political leaders of North Korea and the United States, respectively, is more bombastic, foolish, unpredictable and dangerous. It used to be that the inflammatory wild rhetoric, straight out of an elementary school playground, was exclusive to the North Korean leadership, but the Kims have met their match in Donald Trump. The great fear is that this man’s actions will be as appalling as his words and set off an unspeakable catastrophe on the Korean peninsula. Readers might object to this comparison as simplistic, given the very different character of the two countries, but in considering, historically, how the United States and North Korea have come to the brink of military confrontation, one cannot help but detect resemblances. Thinking about this problem can be informed greatly, in other words, by considering the patterns of American-Korean interactions from the past, and here we must go back a century and a half. The relationship began, in fact, very badly, in the late summer of 186

Aug 16, 2017By Kyung Moon Hwang

Great Labor Uprising of summer 1987

By Kyung Moon HwangStarting last October South Koreans demonstrated the power of collective action in protecting the principles of democracy and the rule of law, and fittingly the culmination of this movement came in the 30th anniversary year of Korean democratization. Many commemorations recently have celebrated the remarkable events of June 1987 in which millions filled the streets to end authoritarian rule.What is often overlooked, however, is that the process did not stop with, or was limited to, political liberalization, but included an equally extraordinary mass movement for economic democratization. Stimulated by the events of June, in early July of 1987 workers at Hyundai Engines in Ulsan established an independent union in order to demand, collectively, higher wages and better working conditions, as well as the right to organize. This spark led to an epochal firestorm of worker actions across the country that became known historically as the Great Labor Uprising of 1987.The period between July and September of 1987 witnessed the eruption of over three thousand strikes a

Aug 2, 2017By mid-July workers in other Hyundai factories began their own democratic unions and went on strike to gain concessions from management for wage increases, job security, humane working conditions, and re

Yun Isang and the East Berlin Case of fifty years ago

By  Kyung Moon HwangA deep sadness spread around the world last week with the death of Liu Xiaobo, the longtime Chinese dissident who had been incarcerated since 2008, when he helped draft an online statement calling for basic democratic reforms. He was widely admired for his courage in the face of oppression and in 2009 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he was not allowed to accept in person.In fact the Chinese authorities immediately condemned the Norwegian government, as if it could somehow revoke a decision made by the Nobel committee, and pressured foreign governments not to publicly support Liu as he rotted away in jail. Even after he was given a medical parole a month ago for terminal cancer, very few officials in established democracies dared call for a complete release for his final days, and likewise world leaders have stayed silent after his death.Such circumstances invite comparisons to the plight of a Korean intellectual, the noted composer Yun Isang, from a half-century ago. In the summer of 1967, Yun, along with the poet Cheon Sang-byeong, painter Yi Eungno

Jul 19, 2017By Kyung Moon Hwang

Korean Historical Sense