[Column] Korea must heal its past to realize its future

Kwon Taesun, Editorial Writer

When those convicted and executed in 1975’s "People’s Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Committee" ( In Hyeok Dang Jae Geon Wi) case were finally found not guilty in a retrial on January 23, I was momentarily hit with a sense of pain. One might be overjoyed at the fact that the names of those eight men had been cleared 32 years after their wrongful deaths, but the pain and suffering their families have had to endure all this time was too much for me to think of. When those families talked about the poverty they’d faced, and how being ostracized by the rest of society had at one point led them to forget how to even communicate with another human being, it unearthed the personal sense of guilt I’d buried deep in my heart.

One of the eight men executed in that case, Kim Yong-won, had been my high school teacher. He could be a little blunt in front of the class, but, perhaps feeling sympathy for me since I was doing so poorly in the physical sciences, he would go out of his way to help me understand things. I cannot describe to you the shock I felt when I learned he had been executed for plotting to overthrow the state. I couldn’t - and wouldn’t - believe it.

The government’s actions were criticized as "judicial murder" in Korea and abroad, but I was someone who had been taught by one of the men, and I had done nothing to help him. I had heard Kim’s family was in dire straits, but all I ever did was worry to myself about it. When his wife visited The Hankyoreh a few days ago, I saw the marks of years of stress and pain engraved on her face, and my shame - of not having done that which was obliged of me as a fellow human - made me unable to ask her how she had endured.

The families of those eight executed men have suffered immeasurably for the past 32 years, and they have demanded that the Grand National Party’s Park Geun-hye apologize on behalf of her father, president Park Chung-hee, the man ultimately responsible for their murder. Since the ‘not guilty’ verdict was handed down, however, Park has said only that it was "merely a court decision." This comes after her remark before the retrial that, even if the case were reopened, it should be something looked at in strict accordance with the law.

The situation has reminded me of a newspaper article I read while visiting Cambodia a few days ago. The Khmer Rouge’s "Brother Number 2," Nuon Chea, second in command under Pol Pot, denied in a Phnom Penh Post interview published January 12 that genocide had occurred, or that he had ever ordered or received reports of the use of torture and execution.

Norbert Klein, who has lived in Phnom Penh for the last 17 years and publishes a newspaper there called The Mirror, says that while he has lived in the city a long time, he still feels a certain distance from Cambodians, that they never fully open their hearts to others. "I think it’s because of the scar that remains from the Khmer Rouge era, when even parents and children couldn’t trust each other." He said he thinks the past has to be dealt with before people can open their grieving hearts. An international court is going to begin looking the past in the face this February in Phnom Penh. The generally held view is that this is not going to be easy. As seen in the Nuon Chea interview, you can’t be sure things are going to go as they should.

It is never easy for countries that have dark periods in their past to deal with the questions that remain. It is especially difficult for the perpetrators to admit their wrongs and apologize. And so, since Park was not a party to what happened, she might feel wrongly accused when people say she needs to apologize just because she is the perpetrator’s daughter. However, Park has used her father’s legacy to the greatest extent possible in the course of cultivating her political strength. She has made her father’s political base, the Yeongnam region, that of her own, and, invoking the name of her father, she has embraced the support she subsequently received. Even under inheritance laws, you must accept the debts as well as the assets. If Park wants to be a true leader for South Korea, it would behoove her to pay off her father’s debts and begin anew with no weight on her shoulders. I will continue to sincerely hope for her apology.

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