Remembrance and Forgiveness

By Deauwand Myers

A few months ago, some Korean friends of mine were educating me on the remembrance of Samiljeol (March 1, 1919 Independence Movement Day).

They discussed Japan's imperialist sins of the past against Korea and the righteous pain felt by many in Korean society who demand a serious engagement of history and a reckoning of past evils by the Japanese. Only then, they argue, will the Korean people forgive the Japanese.

Forgiveness, then, is costly, and I wonder if seeing forgiveness as a long, painful road, both for the violated and the violator, presents a complete analysis. If my Korean friends are right (which they very well may be), then we must seriously engage two of the problems that accompany sin, and conversely, forgiveness.

What are we to do in asking for forgiveness? Secondly, what do we do with the aftermath of sin: as Robert Frost asks, ``what does one do with a diminished thing?"

In graduate school, my academic research often centered on the moral questions evinced in the struggles of the victim and the victor. African-Americans suffered cruelties on a scale and scope that they've not fully recovered from even to this day. The Native Americans, more tragically, lost a great deal during the colonizing and building of the American nation.

What did these groups do to negotiate the trauma of imperialism, and were these negotiations successful? The Native Americans, through war, plague, and poverty, were brought to near extinction by Europeans and their descendants. African-Americans, those that survived, charted an exceedingly painful, and still incomplete, navigation through history.

During the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, African-Americans endeavored to extol the conscience of America to create a more perfect, just union. They said, even while enduring lynching, rapes, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and all manner of social injustice and cruelty: ``We are human, and so are you. We forgive, even though you did not ask for our forgiveness."

Perhaps then, all historically violated peoples should find the moral courage to forgive those that transgress.

Japan (particularly, the Japanese government) must come to terms with what it did to Korea and China. This is without question. But for the sake of Korea's spiritual and national psyche, perhaps Koreans should also begin to forgive ``before" Japan comes around to acknowledging their wrongs, openly and without equivocation.

Most importantly, we ought never to forget the single and most profound lesson learned from forgiving these crimes of nations against other nations. Imperialism is a ``gateway sin." It leads to ― in fact, demands ― other sins. When Japan said to Korea: ``This land is our land," they had to dehumanize the Korean people to assert control. Felonious acts of mass murder and of rape, for example, always attend the perpetuation of imperialism.

It is because of horrors that inevitably accompany imperialism that all nations should diligently seek not to perpetuate it. Imperialism is a sin. Conquering is wrong, and because of the irretrievable losses incurred by this act, we should never, as Americans, as Koreans, as citizens of the world, pursue it, promote it, or profit from it. To do so, after American slavery, after two World Wars, the Holocaust, the Korean War … well, that would be unforgivable.

The writer holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English professor at Shingu College. He has written novels and poetry and can be reached at deauwand@gmail.com.