[Editorial] Ignorance, Red-Baiting About Kang Jeong Koo

National Police Agency superintendent Heo Jun Yeong says professor Kang Jeong Koo, who said the Korean War was a "war of reunification," will be investigated while under arrest. Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry vice president Kim Sang Ryeol has made comments that seem to suggest companies should contemplate not-hiring job applicants who as students took classes from professors who are "anti-market economy." There is controversy growing as a result. We begin by saying once again that academic discourse should not be punished with the National Security Law (NSL). Kim's comments are dangerous for attempting to exercise inappropriate pressure on university education.

All you have to do is read Kang's paper delivered at a national professors organization panel to see that the whole affair originates in ignorance and "labeling." Kang has called the Korean War a "war of reunification" since 2000 and it differs from the "war of national liberation" that is North Korea's official characterization. Key to his whole argument is that if you look at the North's motives, since it started the war, it was a war to unite the peninsula, and that according to international law should be considered a "civil war" and not a "war of aggression." To back that up he cites a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council's Resolution 82. He even said that it is "still could have been a war of reunification even if South Korea's official definition is that it was a war of aggression." Calling that a "pro-North" statement is leftover McCarthyist madness.

The context of his call for United States Forces Korea (USFK) to withdraw and to abolish the US-Korea military alliance is also different. He presented his case "the best long-term proposal" for avoiding a "second Sino-Japanese war" between the US and China; he was not arguing that the USFK should leave immediately. He also said that "US-Korea friendship and goodwill should be transformed to levels equal with other countries."

The sensational hypothesis that, "had the US not intervened the whole of North and South would have been communized," however, is a problematic. "If" is useless in history. Kang says that hypothesis is "realistically a fine bit of insight and a guide," but you have to ask whether that is really the case in the current wasteful controversy.

The Hankyoreh, 7 October 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]