Wounds of history remain unhealed

By Brother Anthony of Taize

Brother Anthony of Taize

There are many ways of viewing the Korean Armistice, all of them likely to provoke the wrath of those who have other ways of seeing it. As it brought an end to armed conflict and destruction, it must be declared a ``good thing.’’ As a solution to the rival claims to control of the Korean peninsula, it sounds rather like something from ``Alice in Wonderland’’ in which the Dodo says, ``Everybody has won and all must have prizes.’’

The two rival versions of Korea embodied in North and South are usually identified with their mentors, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and China for the North, the United States and the free world for the South, and it was those mentors who played the Dodo's part.

The prizes were roughly half the peninsula for each of the two competing visions of Korean nationhood; thus the prize left both sides deeply dissatisfied, because each was convinced that it deserved the whole of Korea and would be satisfied with nothing less. The result of this is today's continuing stalemate between North and South.

By imposing the Armistice, the major powers locked Korea into a protracted impasse during which two very different versions of Korean identity and history located in North and South can never meet, interbreed, reach compromises and ultimately blend into a viable recipe for the future of the whole of Korean society.

In the South, the outcome seems more positive, since the name of the game the South chose to play was ``modernization,’’ which meant becoming part of international industrial capitalism, and that has produced today's wealthy South Korea. The North chose a very different game and still considers that it is playing it well, no matter what others think.

With the Armistice signed and sealed, those from the South who had gone North stayed in the North, while those from the North who came South stayed in the South. The resulting loss to Korea as a whole has been incalculable, since so many of the most talented writers, thinkers, social leaders and artists of the 1940s chose the Northern side (others were kidnapped and taken to it).

They were wrong, of course, since they were mostly unable to make any great contribution to the North while they were lost to the South. The absence from South Korea of that lost generation must never be forgotten, since all the changes and developments that have happened in South Korean history and culture since 1953 would have happened differently if they had been there.

Therefore the Armistice can only be celebrated in that it continues to keep the two Korean sides from flying at each other's throats. It is not the Armistice with its artificially divided prize that is going to enable the Koreans on both sides to stop being enemies and find ways of establishing communication, trust, dialogue, reconciliation. I do not know what will do that, but it absolutely has to happen. It is called ``healing the wounds of history.’’

Brother Anthony of Taize is an educator and translator of Korean literature who has lived in Seoul since 1980. He taught English literature at Sogang University for about 30 years. The naturalized Korean citizen is the laureate of many translation awards and serves as a judge of The Korea Times Translation Award. His Korean name is An Son-jae, meaning "little pilgrim." ― ED.