[KS] Re: Japanese Colonization Period

[Henny Savenije]

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At 01:55 AM 9/3/00, Carlon Haas wrote:
>Hello to all on the list,
>
>I am in need of help.  My wife (she's Korean) and I got into a bit of an 
>argument over a touchy Korean history subject: the Japanese Colonial 
>Period.  I have read books written by Koreans that were subsequently 
>translated into English.  When it comes to the Japanese period, the 
>phrasing starts to change from fact into vaired opinons, such as "It was 
>the darkest period of Korean history", "the brutal japanese regime", 
>etc.  Although I think this was a horrible  period in Korean history, I 
>cannot condone this historical methodology.  So, I ask the venerable
>scholars on this list if:

Often when I get into a discussion like this with Koreans, I ask them if 
they knew that in the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia and Holland (Former 
colonist interned in Indonesia) do hate the Koreans more than the Japanese? 
Then there is a silence, and the question: "Why?" I tell them that the 
Koreans serving for the Japanese were crueler than the Japanese themselves. 
Then the issue about Comfort girls comes up, well did you know that 
(Taiwanese, Philippino and) Dutch women served as comfort girls as well, no 
they don't. Then the question comes up if they were compensated, no they 
weren't either. The problem was that the women could be divided into three 
categories: the ones who wanted it, the ones who didn't want it, but did it 
in order to survive, and finally the ones who didn't want it. Since it was 
almost impossible to decide who belonged to which group, the whole things 
was never settled. Although I understood there have been negotiations 
between the Dutch government and Japan.

And indeed when I was much younger I have heard many stories about both the 
German holocaust and people who were interned in concentration camps in 
Germany, as well as stories about the Japanese and Koreans who tortured the 
Dutch. From those stories I don't know who was crueler, the Germans or the 
Japanese/Koreans, the methods just differed. I think Koreans are right. 
Comparatively speaking this is one of the darkest periods in Korean 
history, beside the Imjin wars and Manchu invasions. On the other hand, 
Taiwan which has a far more violent history, doesn't complain that much 
about the Japanese. I think this has also to do with the fact that Koreans 
needed something to make themselves a unity and give themselves an 
identity. It was convenient to use the Japanese on one side and the 
communists on the other side to get that identity, but also with the fact 
that Korea has little violence in their (written) history. So again, 
comparatively speaking, they are right. When I tell them that Holland has 
been invaded many times in the past, the Koreans ask me if the Dutch still 
hate the Germans, French or Spanish, well I can't speak for the majority 
but at least I don't. (the French and the Spanish never apologized either. 
The killer of the ancestor of our Queen is a Saint in France ;-) There 
isn't particularly a friendly relationship between most Dutch and Germans, 
but that might be due to other reasons.

On (yet) another hand (I only have two ;-) as John Caruso pointed out, the 
Koreans in Japan are still humiliated, though I understood that recently 
they could change their nationality, but the majority doesn't want. On the 
other hand, most of them don't want to go back to Korea. On my trip to 
Namwon, I met a group of old people, I was a bit confused since some of 
them spoke only Japanese, others a mix of Japanese and Korean, but they all 
looked Korean. They appeared to come from Japan and none of them really 
wanted to live in Korea. I forgot to ask about their nationality status.

I think that, when you get into discussions like this, the main issue is to 
make comparisons with other nations. At least the discussion is less 
emotional and more rational. But I think indeed that you will have a hard 
time finding objective history books, though I think that the tide is changing.
-----------------------------
Henny  (Lee Hae Kang)

Feel free to visit
http://www.henny-savenije.demon.nl
and feel the thrill of Hamel discovering Korea (1653-1666)
In Korean
http://www.henny-savenije.demon.nl/indexk2.htm