``Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."― George Orwell (1903-1950)
Wrapping up its labors of nearly a decade, a private panel of historians issued a list of 4,776 pro-Japanese collaborators on Tuesday.
As expected, bereaved family members, descendants and followers of the disgraced ― mostly deceased ― figures, fiercely protested to their inclusion in the directory, as well as against those who drew it up, taking issue with its fairness and correctness and citing the ``principle of equity.''
One can sympathize with and even agree in part with some of these protestors, who say the collaborators had no choice but to cooperate for Japanese colonialists under inevitable circumstances. The artists in particular, including writers and musicians, could hardly avoid their services as colonial propagandists, by persuasion or coercion.
The fact that not all people under similar situations served for the Japanese occupiers, however, show this is where the ``principle of equity'' should be applied ― in differentiating those who somehow stuck to their principles from those who compromised with reality.
Technical matters such as the correctness of details will be able to be solved now that the committee begins receiving objections and complaints which will continue for two months.
Harder to reconcile, however, are the starkly different views on why the nation should be doing this job at this very moment. Rep. Kang Jae-sup, chairman of the governing Grand National Party, summed up such sentiments by saying, ``Picking at the past excessively and intentionally could confuse our footsteps into the future.'' President Lee Myung-bak might have similar thoughts in mind when he said Korea and Japan should not bicker over the past but aim at a future-oriented relationship.
These are views hard to repudiate, because what is to come is always more important than what has passed. However as the famous historian E.H. Carr drew our attention to the fact that history repeats itself, we need not stress the reason people study history: the past tells a lot about the future and enables us to avoid repeating past mistakes.
People who have visited Japan, and its old cities, even just once, know how the Japanese people cherish their past and history, unlike Koreans, as seen by their almost god-like worship of the royal family. To know the difference in the attitudes of these two peoples as regards the past, one has only to see the Japanese' meticulous preservation of historical relics and heritages, however trifle they might seem, and Koreans' loss of numerous national treasures mostly out of carelessness and indifference to their roots.
Japan has never forgotten its past or history and will never do so, whatever they may say to foreigners. It's the Koreans that want to forget the past, particularly its most painful and disgraceful parts.
The biggest reason these pro-Japan collaborators should receive due popular evaluation was they were mostly against the people by serving the tyrannical colonialists. So rectification of embellished historical figures is related with establishing justice in this society.
President Lee, who puts pragmatism ahead of everything in state administration, appears set to sharply reduce these historic panels. Pragmatism is not necessarily associated with justice but we are afraid the President's pragmatism could become synonymous with the neglect of justice.