the Korea Herald November 30. 2003

 

[A Reader's View] Lessons of history

 

I would like to make a few comments regarding your Seoul Searcher columns by Mr. Cho Se-hyon.

Would Cho Se-hyon please explain, first of all, how an uprising in Jeju Island on April 3, 1948 was meant to "topple the government" ('Seoul Searcher,' Nov. 11) that wasn't elected until May 10?

What seems to be a willful distortion requires an explanation or apology. Where is the evidence that his generation fought for freedom and democracy in the Korean War? Korea was governed by people who were anything but democratic and freedoms were so restricted as to be virtually non-existent.

In his columns on Nov. 11 (Politics of apologies) and Nov. 18 (Learning from history), Mr. Cho repeats the grave mistake of equating an alliance with the U.S. with an alliance with democracy. We know that the American anti-communist stance was also anything but democratic.

He would now, in the name of some unspecified ideology, deny Prof. Song Du-yul freedom of expression, association, movement and assembly. In short, a denial of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He presumes to judge Song Du-yul in the name of laws that were passed by fascist dictators with the approval of the U.S. He claims some kind of moral high ground for a so-called capitalist system, which is anything but capitalist, against a so-called communist system which is anything but communist.

The United States, Korea, or anyone else, can claim no moral authority to oppose communism any more than someone can imagine a moral authority to oppose capitalism or free enterprise.

States will organize their economies in such ways as they see fit. What we should be concerned with is justice. To fight against communism has no moral basis, but to oppose totalitarianism does. To fight against totalitarianism in one region, such as North Korea, only to establish fascism in South Korea, does nothing for the cause of justice.

South Korean people in the period between 1945 and 1950 had very little confidence in the American military government or the emerging Korean leadership, based on the actions of the cruel South Korean military and police who managed to murder 100,000 South Korean citizens before the war had even begun.

Small wonder that so many South Korean conscripts fought less than enthusiastically, while the military administration hoarded food and equipment allocated for soldiers.

This is quite similar to many common conscripts in the American Revolution, who knew that this rich man's "revolution" was just a matter of trading one master or overlord for another, and that they as poor people, as usual, would be slaughtered and sacrificed in a war to benefit rich, propertied interests.

Thousands fled to the Canadian colonies to escape the madness and hypocrisy of this so-called American "revolution," and Canadians have been wary of the U.S. ever since.

There certainly is no miracle in "supply-side" economics, nor is there "excellent leadership" or "a clear vision of the future" in creating, along with pollution and overcrowded cities, an economic bubble that must eventually burst.

The U.S. subverted Koreans by demanding their involvement in the Vietnam War, but fascists like Park Chung-hee and his ilk were only too willing to comply. Foreign aid was actually in very short supply until this Vietnam development and without this kind of extortion of life and humanity, Park Chung-hee's administration would have floundered and fallen in abject failure.

The writer teaches English in Seoul. - Ed.

By David Marnoch