[KS] Re: Collaboration

[North Asia Pacific Research Group]

Dear Colleagues

Perhaps it would help sometimes to look elsewhere, so that the Korean
experience of colonialism and the dilemmas it caused for those living
under it, fall into some sort of perspective. Are Korean experiences
more intense than those of say, the Poles under the Russians from the
late 18th century to 1917, or Indians under the British empire, or
indeed, the Irish and their relationship with the British?  There is a
huge literature on 'collaboration' in wartime Europe, for example, which
might just provide some understanding of the issues.

I write as one who tries to be a historian - detached and objective as
far as possible - works for the British government, but whose parents
were Irish, and at least two of whose grandparents, sometimes at least,
worked for the British government in Ireland - as did an awful lot of
the population  - one reason I would never dream of working on the
history of Irealand, for I think that I am too close to it to be
suitably detached.

Jim Hoare.

More study and less emotion seems required.

In message <3.0.32.19990204085724.006d8cc4 at benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu>,
Chungmoo Choi <cchoi at uci.edu> writes
>
>Actually as David will find soon, the film "the KAPF Writers" is not much
>about taking sides (although Yi Kwang-su appears as the main antagonist at
>the beginning) but mostly how Ri Ch'an gets to be enlightened by the Great
>Leader and wrote the "General's Song" upon the guidance of Kim Chong-suk
>regarding the "Anti-Japanese Literature" which has been adopted as DPRK's
>canon since the 1960s.  Of course the story follows Ri's love story.  In a
>way this 9-part film delineates the ideological genealogy of DPRK's own
>literary history. 
>
>Chungmoo Choi
>
>
>At 10:52 AM 2/4/99 -0500, you wrote:
>>FYI, there is an interesting, nine-part tv series on the Korean Artists
>>Proletarian Federation, produced for DPRK tv, which devotes quite a bit of
>>time and attention (so far; I have just started viewing it) to Yi Kwang
>>Su...  Naturally, the issue of who was taking what kind of stand vis-s-vis
>>Japan is a key theme in the series.
>>
>>DM
>>
>>
>>



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