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Shimmanni
Seoul
Yes, Korea (Republic of) is an open society in a sense. And a democratic one, too. But the fact that an army coup has been the object of their discourse between a senior writer of a monthly magazine and an army division commander is a sign that the Korean society is in a serious trouble.
The editor took a professional travel to a frontline army camp, where he has had very informative conversations with the unit commander. The visitor has, of all the subjects, broached the topic of an army coup and the commander, who wanted to remain anonymous, has given him major reasons for the inevitable frustration of any army coup attempts.
"An army coup is impossible bordering on being unimaginable," the division commander is alleged to have said. "Why is it that?" the writer cum reporter was inquisitive. "Think about all the electronic revolutions and the subsequent social changes," the commander replied.
Mouths could not be sealed. Secrets couldn't be kept. Because all the military and civilian electronic gadgets, that is, the soldiers' and civilian multi-functional mobile phones would ring the nation and would cry wolf. Curfew-free civilian activities and the traffic would cause congestions on their way to the capital which would assuredly frustrate the blitz-krieg movements of the patriotic soldiers, he opined.
Mr. Shin Kee Nam had been chairman of the ruling Open Uri Party of Korea (Republic of) to a recent day when he was uprooted out of the blue. He must have been taken away by his dead father to a political Atlantis who might have thrashed about in his grave in shame.
What happened? Why has he made a sudden metamorphosis from a cocky guy with an ostrich's steps to a pitiful lot with a scared sitting duck position? It's because the Donga Daily News, one of three major rightist newspapers, made bare his identity of a greedy politico with blemishes, through an investigative reporting about his father's past career of a Japanese MP (military police) sergeant under the Japanese colonial rule.
His father, Mr. Shin Joong Mook, had volunteered to serve as an MP in the Japanese Army, according to the newspaper. His loyalty to the colonial Japanese monarchy had exceeded collaborationist levels. He had led a propagandist campaign, beating drums for Korean young men to join Japanese barracks.
He had gone one step further. He had ferreted out military service evaders and freedom (independence) fighters, grilling them by harsh means of tortures. Two victim witnesses in their late eighties have come out to the newspaper and testified to Shin's brutalities.
"I had had an intention to tell the truth about my father," Shin said. "How on earth have you led a brazen campaign to explore and discover the truths about pro-Japanese collaborationist activities of the people concerned during its colonial domination in Korea?" the reporters and cameramen about him and the viewers as well have thought aloud.
The chairman and his party, with a mighty and open Presidential backup, have been waging "a war with ghosts" and in their initial offense they have suffered a major setback. A National Assembly bill, to be enacted sooner or later, with the eerie moniker of "the Liquidation of Comprehensive Past Bill," (a variation of the Survey of the pro-Japanese Collaborationist Activities), whose open aim has been to get rid of Ms. Park, who has turned out to be a strong contender for the next presidential election, has been fated to be self-contradictory and the subsequent self-destruction.
How did they come to think it possible anyway to "reckon with the past"? Whatever you name it, ("liquidate the comprehensive past, quoting President Roh, the major proponent of this brazen campaign) is it worthy and capable of an attempt anyway? In what capacity and by whom? By the sorts of Mr. Shin with the same blemishes and human faults, mistakes and crimes as with Ms. Park and her party comrades and rightist politicians?
In the absence of 60 years since the Liberation from the Japanese colonial yoke when almost all the criminals and victims have gone into ashes and evidences lost, in the interval of eight republican governments of which this current one is the most incompetent, at this time of economic depression when suicides have become a common rule, with all the other priorities set aside?
Is this the frustration of democracy? Can't we do anything about him, only if he, (or she) however he (or she) has gone nuts and has proven himself (or herself) incapable of exercising his power to the benefit of the nation with reason, makes it to the throne of power through the popular votes?
Mr. Shin Kee Nam had been chairman of the ruling Open Uri Party of Korea (Republic of) to a recent day when he was uprooted out of the blue. He must have been taken away by his dead father to a political Atlantis who might have thrashed about in his grave in shame.
What happened? Why has he made a sudden metamorphosis from a cocky guy with an ostrich's steps to a pitiful lot with a scared sitting duck position? It's because the Donga Daily News, one of three major rightist newspapers, made bare his identity of a greedy politico with blemishes, through an investigative reporting about his father's past career of a Japanese MP (military police) sergeant under the Japanese colonial rule.
His father, Mr. Shin Joong Mook, had volunteered to serve as an MP in the Japanese Army, according to the newspaper. His loyalty to the colonial Japanese monarchy had exceeded collaborationist levels. He had led a propagandist campaign, beating drums for Korean young men to join Japanese barracks.
He had gone one step further. He had ferreted out military service evaders and freedom (independence) fighters, grilling them by harsh means of tortures. Two victim witnesses in their late eighties have come out to the newspaper and testified to Shin's brutalities.
"I had had an intention to tell the truth about my father," Shin said. "How on earth have you led a brazen campaign to explore and discover the truths about pro-Japanese collaborationist activities of the people concerned during its colonial domination in Korea?" the reporters and cameramen about him and the viewers as well have thought aloud.
The chairman and his party, with a mighty and open Presidential backup, have been waging "a war with ghosts" and in their initial offense they have suffered a major setback. A National Assembly bill, to be enacted sooner or later, with the eerie moniker of "the Liquidation of Comprehensive Past Bill," (a variation of the Survey of the pro-Japanese Collaborationist Activities), whose open aim has been to get rid of Ms. Park, who has turned out to be a strong contender for the next presidential election, has been fated to be self-contradictory and the subsequent self-destruction.
How did they come to think it possible anyway to "reckon with the past"? Whatever you name it, ("liquidate the comprehensive past, quoting President Roh, the major proponent of this brazen campaign) is it worthy and capable of an attempt anyway? In what capacity and by whom? By the sorts of Mr. Shin with the same blemishes and human faults, mistakes and crimes as with Ms. Park and her party comrades and rightist politicians?
In the absence of 60 years since the Liberation from the Japanese colonial yoke when almost all the criminals and victims have gone into ashes and evidences lost, in the interval of eight republican governments of which this current one is the most incompetent, at this time of economic depression when suicides have become a common rule, with all the other priorities set aside?
Is this the frustration of democracy? Can't we do anything about him, only if he, (or she) however he (or she) has gone nuts and has proven himself (or herself) incapable of exercising his power to the benefit of the nation with reason, makes it to the throne of power through the popular votes?
Rapidity has been a motto of their lives with which they have dealt with things of their common concern. They have not stood a long wait. They have never been in a long line of people to buy tickets to their native town during traditional seasonal festivities.
Convenience has been a guiding light by which they have risen in the world. They have bypassed any discomforts of the Establishment, taking advantage of available loopholes. A prosecutor-turned lawyer and his judicial wife have not sent their offspring (two daughters) to public high schools under the jurisdiction of a district school board, sending them to Alternative Schools, instead.
The man and his wife adore brevity. To anybody who tries on them a dull sermon they shed subtleties of manners, blurting out, "Be brief!" The wife, an appellate court judge, has looked down on the seniority of Korean judicial hierarchy, overstepping her senior judges on her way to a Supreme Court Justice nomination.
A large expanse of the north-eastern periphery of the ancient China had been a major living space of the Kingdom of Koguryo (B.C.37--A.D.667), the predecessor of Koryo (Korea). Archives, royal tombs, frescoes and Stone Memorial testify to the validity of the history of Koguryo. Documents of the neighborly countries, China and Japan, have to a recent point, explicitly and implicitly voiced no contradictory viewpoints pertaining to the validity of the kingdom.
History of a nation is not like real estates changing hands from one person to the other. Even the real estates are recorded in a public registry, which is the documentation or histories of landlords' rise and fall. You do not realize every momentum of a specific behavior of an agent. Greed might be a motivation. But any sudden contradictory claim of a property ownership over the public registry is considered false.
History is not bunk. It is a small yet strong truth which a great historian or a big government of a big country cannot change nor modify. You can pilfer one's possessions, kidnap others' women, and make other nations offer tributes to your country for a little while. But you cannot pilfer another country's history.
Vines of arrowroots wind up and around pine trees. Ivies creep around brick walls. Had it not been for the pine trees and the brick walls what would have been the fate of arrowroot vines and ivies? They must have been nothing more than creepers. In brief, they could not have imagined themselves rising in the world, not to mention rising to the top.
With locomotive mouth with light caliber, President Roh Moo Hyun, who had once been impeached within a year of a five-year term by the National Assembly for his divisive activities bordering on brushes with law and order, and almost discharged from the Presidency at the Constitutional Court, did not forsake his age-old habits of picking one's flaws and subsequent conflicts and pitting one section of society with the other.
President Roh took issue with late President Park Jung Hee regime's legitimacy, trying to undermine the reputation of Ms Park Keunhee, one of the dictator's offspring and the chief of the opposition Hannara Party. He criticized the dictatorship, branding it as the object of historical liquidation. He went to great lengths to make Ms Park and her proponents tick, saying that he now feels so ashamed of himself taking the judicial exam in the 1970s during the Park dictatorship and taking a judicial post as a district court judge under the Park regime.
Online citizens stepped forward and tried to take the bull by horns. Putting Roh's mode of life to the question, they made a go of extending and rebutting the proposition of his logic. The extension of the proposition was: If you had lived at the time of the Japanese colony you had also taken the Exam for Higher Officials and done well as a high colonial official. The rebuttal of the proposition was: Go and get your then exam papers, especially the Constitution exam papers public with the nation.
Mr. Roh is compared to a renegade arrowroot plant. He, winding up and around a huge pine tree to his top honor, picks fault with the tree which had given him support. He had not gone to the countryside then and there to farm but taken to big cities to rise in the world and become a coveted high official by responding positive to the Establishment. Now, he tries to hurt Ms Park's image and wreck the opposition party because she is the first daughter of the dictator who had once served as a colonial army officer (he is now on the list of the pro-Japanese collaborators to be enacted in the Congress) and who has literally saved the nation from poverty and destruction.
Mr. Rho's father-in-law is alleged to have been a frantic Communist partisan who had presided over the so-called "People's Court" and executed 10-some locals during the occupation period by the North Korean People's Army at the time of the Korean War in 1950. He is known to have been blind and the way of the verdict for execution was touch and sense the palm. If the hands of the accused were rough enough to feel hard knots on the palms he was classified to be a hard laborer and was able to save his life. A valid question at issue: If the People's Court were to be held to morrow, next month or next year, which is to be found more guilty, the colonial army officer (lieutenant) of 70 years ago and a Commie of 60 years ago who had been engaged in execution of the innocent people whose offsprings can testify to the massacre.
