A Dirty Attempt Backfires
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?
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home