The governing party disqualified two controversial candidates selected to run in the parliamentary election for their distorted historical views. Despite the withdrawal, the Saenuri Party’s identity is undergoing a serious public review.
Professor Lee Young-jo described the 1980 pro-democracy movement in Gwangju as a popular revolt. He portrayed the April 3, 1948, massacre of civilians on Jeju Island as a Communist-led rebellion.
It is quite disturbing to interpret the nation’s two traumatic incidents either as a revolt or a rebellion. The victims were not mobs agitated by Communists. The professor insulted the family members of the innocent victims, and went against the mainstream view of Koreans.
The government and the National Assembly have already concluded that numerous innocent civilians were killed during the authorities’ brutal crackdown. The National Assembly posthumously honored the victims.
Lee’s argument for semantic misinterpretation is partly convincing. Problematic is his blanket categorization of the pro-democracy movement as an act of illegitimate violence. Instead of defending himself, he should apologize to the family members of the victims for damaging their honor.
Park Sang-il, vice chairman of the Venture Business Association, also wrongly portrayed the pro-independence fighters against the Japanese colonial rule as terrorist bandits. He also said Korea could not take issue with Japan’s annexation treaty it signed in 1905.
Categorizing pro-independence fighters as terrorists contradicts the spirit of the Constitution and reflects the view of Japanese colonizers. Japan forcibly imposed the 1905 annexation treaty on Korea. Without the patriotic fighters, Korea’s liberation from Japan’s colonial rule might not have been possible.
The Saenuri Party’s predecessor was the Democratic Justice Party, founded by the military junta leader Chun Doo-hwan in 1980. Chun took power following a bloody crackdown on Gwangju citizens calling for democracy. It was, in fact, a rebellion by Chun and his military cronies against citizens peacefully calling for the lifting of martial law.
The party also inherited the Democratic Republican Party, which Park Chung-hee founded after a military coup in 1961.
It is reassuring that the head of the Saenuri Party’s interim leadership committee Park Geun-hye, the eldest daughter of the late Park Chung-hee, belatedly challenged the historical views of the two candidates.
However, she should apologize to citizens in Gwangju and Jeju and pro-independence fighters. She must explain the background behind picking Lee as he has written about her father’s history, which Harvard University published last May.
Her father is both an asset and a liability for Park. Few dispute his industrialization drive, but the 18-year brutal rule delayed the nation’s democratization.
The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration and his Saenuri Party get a poor grade in history assessment and human rights records. They slashed the budget for projects and merged agencies in charge of righting the wrongs of history.
People may interpret history through their own ideological prisms but political parties and public post-holders should be objective and unbiased.