[KS] Re: Peer Gynt??

[Koen De Ceuster]

Dear Mike,

Let me elaborate on my earlier posting, which you seem to have taken
quite personal, but was not intended as such at all. I hope the
following will make this clear.

You wrote:
> I just wanted to emphasize something I said to Jaqueline Pak some time
> ago: my quoting Duus' work to frame my question was incautious.  But
> the question itself was not, as Mr. De Ceuster suggests, " determined
> by the Korean term 'ch'inilp'a'".  This is because it couldn't have
> been; i.e. when I first framed my question, I hadn't the slightest
> idea what the term meant.

Quite right, but framing your question as you did, seems to echo the
"ch'inilp'a" category. It is not because you do not read Korean, that
there is no chance of "contamination". Your question must have arisen
from somewhere. Ultimately, if you would trace back the trail which led
you to your question, you'll probably find some Korean source. 

Rather than to be apologetic about your question, you should be quite
pleased by the amount of discussion it caused. In fact, you unknowingly
touched a very complex issue which begs to be dealt with. And as the
discussion meanders, ever more fundamental questions are raised. You
touched a raw nerve, and the agitation it caused calls for some
introspection.

The complexity of the collaboration issue is partly caused by the fact
that this is a chapter in Korea's history that is not closed. This is a
real life issue. As citizens, Koreans have to take sides in this
-eminently political- debate. As outsiders (i.e. as we are not citizens
of Korea, whether DPRK or ROK) we have to be careful not to confuse
historiography with taking sides in a political debate.
As a historian, I am highly interested in the development of this
debate. As I indicated in my earlier posting, it is my impression that
this is an issue which is apparently more linked to post-liberation
political developments than to the colonial period reality. 
At the same time, there is a need to "get the record straight". Several
approaches are possible, and here too, we -as outsiders- have to be
circumspect. My own research on Yun Ch'i-ho has mainly looked at how Yun
ended his life collaborating with the Japanese authorities. I am well
aware that trying to understand how this individual ended up
collaborating can be understood as condoning his collaboration. This
was/is not the purpose of my research. In fact, the reason why -back
then- I decided to take up this issue was the fact that two divergent
appreciations of Yun Ch'i-ho co-existed. On the one hand he was hailed
as a nationalist (for his late 19thC involvement in the Independence
Club e.a.), on the other he was condemned as a traitor (for his open
support of the Japanese war effort in the 1940s). Nobody then seemed
interested in discovering how this apparent nationalist turned a
collaborator. 
Looking at the issue from such an angle makes one understand that the
distinction between a "nationalist" and a "collaborator" was at times
flimsy. Ideologically, they were sometimes hardly to be distinguished.
So in the end, it all came down to taking sides, a choice that was
highly personal and all too often irrational (meaning difficult to
rationalise). 
Still, collaboration is not just about ideology, but also about deeds.
Korean scholarship on collaboration (and I refer explicitly to the
publications of the mid80s, early 90s, the "Ch'inilp'a 99 in" and other
"Ch'inilp'a" publications, which took their lead from Im Chong-guk's
research) concentrated on facts: public statements and deeds. That is
what was meant in earlier postings with "listings": enumerating
speeches, membership of certain organisations, financial contributions
to the war effort, .... 
This is important, but research should not stop there. And indeed it
does not stop there. I was most pleased during my recent stay in Korea
to find recent scholarship moving away from this "statistical" approach
into more in-depth studies of colonial period reality. The debate has
only just begon!
 
Koen De Ceuster
Centre for Korean Studies
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
Tel: -- 31 71 527 2603
Fax: -- 31 71 527 2215
DeCeuster at rullet.LeidenUniv.nl



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