By Kim Hyo-jin
Rival parties are locking horns over what date should be recognized as the nation’s foundation day.
The ruling Saenuri Party advocates Aug. 15, 1948 as the foundation day because the South Korean government was established on the day after the nation’s liberation from the 1910-1945 Japan’s colonial rule. Some of its lawmakers are attempting to push for a bill to legalize the argument.
The move followed President Park Geun-hye’s Liberation Day speech on Monday, in which she said, “Today marks the 68th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea.”
The main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) urged the ruling party to withdraw its push for enactment, insisting that it intends to exempt collaborators in the Japanese occupation era from criticism of their wrongdoings.
The party also argued that it runs against the Constitution stipulating that it upholds the legitimacy of the provisional government established in 1919.
“We are wondering what lies behind the move that denies the history of the independence movement against Japan’s rule and the legitimacy of the provisional government,” Rep. Lee Jae-jung, an MPK spokesman, said. “We strongly urge President Park and the Saenuri Party to retract the claim immediately.”
MPK former Chairman Moon Jae-in also denounced Park’s view, describing it as a “preposterous” claim that contradicts history.
“The government’s first official report, published on Sept. 1, 1948, made it clear that the year was the 30th year of the Republic of Korea,” he wrote on his Facebook account, Tuesday.
“Not to mention the previous governments have officially noted that the 1948 Liberation Day is the day when the government was established, not when the nation was founded.”
The ruling Saenuri Party fueled the partisan controversy, Wednesday, after its senior lawmakers backed Park’s perspective, saying it needs to seek enactment on the day of the nation’s founding.
With National Assembly deputy speaker Shim Jae-cheol of the Saenuri Party at the forefront of the legislative move, party Chairman Lee Jung-hyun proposed a televised public debate between the parties, saying it was a “very important issue.”
Analysts viewed that the ruling party is seeking the attention of its loyal conservative voters in the run-up to the presidential election next year, and momentum amid political gridlock over scandals involving senior presidential secretary Woo Byung-woo.
The issue has long been a source of an ideological dispute in the country.
Conservative politicians and the New Right, a group of right-wing historians, have asserted that the year 1948, when the internationally recognized government was set up after independence, should be viewed as the nation’s founding day.
Liberal politicians and mainstream historians, however, interpreted the argument as an attempt to legitimize collaborators from the Japanese occupation era and to highlight the achievements of the late first President Syngman Rhee and the following military government in the 1960s and 1970s.
They argue that April 13, 1919 when the government-in-exile was set up in Shanghai, China, must be regarded as the founding day.