hankyoreh

It is unfortunate that the vested interests in today‘s South Korea have a bloodline that stretches back to those who collaborated with the Japanese colonizers, and those who protected dictatorial governments after liberation. In order to hide this blemish, they have had to step up the anti-Communist, Cold War ideology and suppressions, while manipulating history and distorting scholarship. The Park Chung-hee Memorial Hall that opened yesterday was one of this movement’s longstanding goals, a signal of the persistence of efforts to twist memory.
　There is nothing wrong with the followers of a former president building a memorial to him and trying to share his achievements. A memorial hall can serve as a meaningful place of education, alerting people to trial and error while also carrying on the accomplishments of the former leader. The Kim Dae-jung Library was already opened along these lines, and efforts are under way to build a memorial hall for former president Roh Moo-hyun. We cannot denounce the very idea of a memorial to Park simply because he was a dictator.
　The problem has to do with the items to be displayed there. While they should all be selected according to principles of truthfulness, there should at least be no distortions simply for the sake cleansing former president‘s legacy. In that sense, the Park Chung-hee Memorial Hall has gotten off on the wrong foot. The developers have cherry-picked and embellished achievements by Park, while sanitizing his coup d’etat and the Yushin dictatorship. As the memorial project committee put it, if younger people without knowledge of the 1960s or 1970s only see this exhibition, Park Chung-hee is likely to be branded to them as merely a pioneer in the revival and modernization of the people. A library reportedly scheduled to open this summer is to contain an array of personal effects, Cabinet items, and handwritten orders, all dedicated to the romanticization of Park Chung-hee. One is left speechless at the thought of taxpayer money and citizen assets being spent to build this hall of distortion.
　If the memorial hall had been built by Park‘s estate or donations from his admirers, it would be up to the individual to judge any glorification or praise of him. But this hall came to a cost of 17.8 billion won (about $15.8 million) in government money, and the city of Seoul provided 5,260 square meters of prime real estate for free. Fifty billion won (about $44.4 million) reportedly came from the Federation of Korean Industries as donations from member companies. But even this was, strictly speaking, the assets of those companies’ shareholders. This was likely why the memorial project association agreed on a land donation to the city of Seoul--the content of the exhibits would have to accord with that public character.
　Public money should not be spent reviving the specter of a dictator. Nor should it be used to trample basic rights, damage democracy, or help pro-Japanese compradors and lackeys of dictatorships regain influence. The government and the city of Seoul should fulfill their responsibility to prevent the Park Chung-hee Memorial Hall from becoming a hall of distortion.
　Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]