The complexities of Memorial Day

By Kyung Moon Hwang

This year, the observance of Memorial Day (Hyeonchungil), when South Koreans honor their military dead, carries extra significance. This summer will mark the 65th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, as well as the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, and hence of Korea's liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule.

But those normally memorialized are independence fighters or soldiers who died in the Korean War or Vietnam War, not the thousands of Koreans who fought in the Great Pacific War of World War II. Like many other nations victimized by imperialism and colonialism, in fact, South Koreans have faced difficult decisions about the ways they remember their military history.

Such dilemmas raise very important questions, however, about how to view modern Korean history as a whole. We can begin with why certain soldiers are commemorated while others are not.

Those who served in the South Korean military during the Korean War included many, especially in the commanding ranks, who also served the Japanese empire in its wars of imperialist aggression throughout Asia. These soldiers are understandably counted among the fallen heroes, but only by ignoring the fact that they also fought, in effect, against Korean independence in World War II.

Why explains this contradiction? It is the same reason why the thousands of Korean soldiers who died in World War II are almost completely forgotten. Many of them "volunteered" for the Japanese army from 1938 to 1944, but it turns out that

most of these volunteers were forced into this duty by poverty or other circumstances that had nothingto do with their allegiance to the Japanese empire.

The rest of the Korean soldiers in World War II were conscripted, even kidnapped, into military service between 1944 and 1945. In other words, they, too, were victims of Japanese colonial rule. Shouldn't this make them worthy of commemoration today?

The problem is that distinguishing between the true volunteers who fought willingly for Japan, on the one hand, and those who were forced into these terrible circumstances, on the other, is simply not possible, given the existing documentary evidence. And even if the sources were available, how could one make such judgments about who enlisted with "proper" motives and who did not?

So the larger problem is more ethical and philosophical. Should Memorial Day and other efforts to commemorate military duty recognize only those who fought in the "good" wars? The soldiers, though, like those who fought in World War II, did not have a say in whether their particular war was just or legitimate. Almost all of them fought because they were forced to do so by the political system in place at the time. This was true all over the world, and throughout history.

In some cases, this issue is more clear cut. Almost no one today, for example, would favor a memorial or holiday dedicated to honoring the German soldiers of World War II, given that Germany was the clear aggressor in that conflict and perpetrated the Holocaust.

And while the parallels are not absolute, we cannot salute the Japanese soldiers in the imperial army that rampaged through Asia while committing genocide and other atrocities, even if they were not in positions of making battlefield decisions. As Japanese, they bear the responsibility, in some form or another, for the horrors inflicted on the other peoples of Asia.

But where does this leave the Korean soldiers in the Japanese army? Were they also contributors to Japan's imperialistic aggression? Or were they, as people who were colonized by Japan, also victims? The official judgment of the South Korean government appears to be that they were more the former than the latter. Otherwise the Korean soldiers of World War II would be commemorated on Memorial Day, one would think.

So this raises another disturbing question: Should nationalism remain the standard for judging the propriety of a war, and how should war itself be commemorated? This issue is relevant also for considering South Korea's participation, on the American side, in the Vietnam War from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.

Aside from the conscripts, many of the Korean soldiers who went to Vietnam did so knowing full well the stakes, given the pervasive ideology of anti-communism. Still others volunteered for service seeking adventure or fortune.

Regardless, like the Americans, South Korean soldiers in the Vietnam War committed atrocities on innocent civilians, a fact that began to be openly discussed in the 1990s with the onset of democratization. And it has long been well known that many South Korean soldiers, including those honored in national cemeteries and national holidays, engaged in mass killings of civilians during the Korean War.

One cannot account morally for these unsettling facts without facing perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all on Memorial Day: Why does South Korea (or any country, for that matter) commemorate fallen soldiers in the first place? If the purpose is to perpetuate a simplistic nationalist view of a very complex and disturbing history, then it seems to do a disservice to those who died in these battles. The only way to truly honor the soldiers and other victims of wars is to consider, thoughtfully and carefully, why and how these military conflicts occurred in the first place.

Kyung Moon Hwang is associate professor in the Department of History, University of Southern California. He is the author of "A History of Korea ― An Episodic Narrative" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Korean translation was published as 황경문, "맥락으로 읽는 새로운 한국사" (21세기 북스, 2011).

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