hankyoreh

The government has officially decided to call this year’s August 15th Liberation Day (Gwangbok Jeol) event “The National Celebration of the 63rd Liberation Day (Gwangbok Jeol) and 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the Republic of Korea.” It tried to avoid the “Foundation Day” controversy by putting “Liberation Day” at the front of it. The Korea Liberation Association (Gwangbok Hoe) had declared that it would not participate in the event, and other independence movement and history groups had been strongly opposed to calling it only “Foundation Day,” so the government had no choice but to stitch something together.

However, the administration does not seem to have given up on the idea of emphasizing the founding of the state over liberation. The national celebration has the word for liberation in it, but the theme for all other official events is the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the republic. This in turn has led all pro-administration or conservative media to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the republic, while MBC and other media are using phrases like “the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the government” in special programs marking the August 15 holiday, and the controversy over the most important holiday of the Republic of Korea grows deeper.

Changing Liberation Day to Foundation Day was an idea that came from scholars on the “New Right” and was then promoted in the market of public opinion by the pro-administration media. Members of the ruling Grand National Party proposed a bill in the National Assembly to make the change in the law, and in May the administration commissioned a committee to mark the commemoration, which has emphasized the foundation theme in its work. At the basis of New Right thinking about history is the belief that it was only colonial rule that modernized Korea, that the Republic of Korea was founded by Syngman Rhee, and that the country has Park Chung-hee to thank for industrialization. This thinking praises Japanese colonial rule, the trampling of liberal democracy and a murderous dictator. It has been warmly received by those who collaborated with the Japanese during Japan’s colonization of Korea and their families, and the heirs of the dictatorship forces that supported them applied that view to how they did things.

The legal lineage (beoptong) of the Republic of Korea is the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. The same Syngman Rhee held up as the father of the nation’s founding by collaborationist and dictatorial elements himself wrote, on the occasion of the establishment of the government in 1948, that the date was “the Thirtieth Year of the Republic” and called August 15th Gwangbok Jeol (Liberation Day). He called August 15, 1948, “Government Establishment Day” (Jeongbu Surip Il). It is to that extent that the two words used for liberation from Japan, the “restoration” of the “light” in gwangbok, was a term that even Syngman Rhee could not ignore, as it expressed the hopes and wishes of the whole of the Korean people. The establishment of the government was the fruit of that “restoration of the light” that was liberation.

There were those who feared liberation: those who dutifully collaborated with the Japanese in anti-Korean activities. These individuals were protected by the dictatorships after what would become a government only of the south was established, and then they trampled on the spirit of our people, democracy and independence. It is against this background that certain groups want to change “liberation” to “nation founding.” Abandoning “Government Establishment Day” to emphasize the “founding” is the same as admitting they are the same as those elements.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]