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the president of South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The future of the organization became unclear when the Grand National Party submitted a group of bills that would merge and abolish Korea’s many truth commissions into one.

The plan for merging and abolishing past history truth commissions, professed by the Lee Myung-bak administration since the time of Lee’s presidential transition committee, is showing signs of being realized. Bills for the amendment of 15 related laws, submitted to the National Assembly on November 20 by the Grand National Party’s Shin Ji-ho and 13 other Assembly members, form a framework for combining the functions of the 14 history truth commissions currently operating into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea. The declared purposes behind the amendments were “cutting the budget and increasing efficiency,” but the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, which is in charge of the effort, put forth the opinion that “the effects of merger and abolition are not large.” Related groups and victims are protesting vehemently, saying that it is a strategy that seeks to effectively neutralize commission activities while ignoring the historically symbolic nature of truth commissions.

The Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths in the Military, which finishes its statutory period of activity (3 years) at the end of this month, has been unable to resolve even half of the cases it has received to date. The ruling party’s amendment proposes transferring jurisdiction for the unresolved cases to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Democratic Party Assembly member Ahn Gyu-back and others responded by submitting an amendment to the Assembly including a two-year extension of the commission’s activity.

Many are commenting that the PTCSD is an inappropriate candidate for merging and abolition, as it has different functions and character from other commissions. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the other commissions have the main task of finding out the truth about “political incidents” during the authoritarian era, the PTCSD has a strong “public grievance” character, investigating the unjust deaths of individual victims.

Inha University law professor Lee You-jung said, “The responsibilities of the PTCSD demand medicolegal expertise, for example in post-mortem examinations, and so a reckless merger and abolition could actually bring down its efficiency.”

Sungkyunkwan University history professor Seo Joong-seok said, “The commission has a certain degree of individuality. I suspect whether there might be some impure intent behind the proposal to combine it into one commission.” While the commission investigating the Jeju Uprising of April 3, 1948, established expertise during its activities over more than eight years, including in the unearthing and preservation of remains, integrating the commission into another place might require a larger budget and more resources to adapt to the duty, Seo added.

An internal document in the MOPAS also expressed the opinion that “there are concerns that efficiency will drop in aspects such as the continuation of tasks after integration, leading instead to delays in the treatment of cases.”

The ruling party’s amendment raises “overlapping responsibilities” as the major grounds for the need to merge and abolish commissions. For example, in the case of the suspected fabrication of espionage charges against Lee Soo-keun, they cite different conclusions reached by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the commission for examining reputation restoration and compensation for individuals involved in the democratization movement, where the former decided that it was an incident fabricated through torture by authorities, while the latter said that it was difficult to recognize Lee Soo-keun’s democratization campaign.

The commissions involved responded by saying that this stemmed from a “lack of understanding” of the completely different characters of investigation responsibilities and evaluation/compensation responsibilities. The main responsibility of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is to ascertain the truth in matters such as torture and fabrication with certain incidents, while the democratization movement compensation commission is an organization that determines whether individuals “contributed to the democratization of Korean society” and decides whether to restore their reputations and provide compensation.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission official said, “With the Lee Soo-keun case, determining whether there was torture and/or fabrication by public authorities and determining whether his acts contributed to democratization are completely different issues.” The official added that it was a stretch to call those responsibilities overlapping.

The PTCSD’s rate of case resolution was a mere 42 percent as of late October. This is attributed to the fact that the 600 actual cases received were two times the 300 predicted at the time of its launching. The situation is not much different from the other commissions: the rate of resolution for the Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property is only 30 percent, and that of the Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under the Japanese Imperialism Republic of Korea is 37 percent. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has only resolved 29 percent of the cases it has received to date, and with a statutory two-year period of activity and a possible two-year extension, it has passed over halfway through its maximum term of six years. “Just our responsibilities right now would be difficult to finish by the last day of the term, and if we get even the work from other commissions, it’s basically impossible to handle,” said an investigator for this commission.

Only four of the 14 currently operating past history commissions, including the PTCSD, are engaging in real research endeavors. For this reason, some inside and outside of the history commissions are voicing the opinion that it would be rational to consider, if absolutely necessary, letting the real investigation tasks finish first, and then merge and abolish the places with remaining compensation and reputation restoration proceedings.

Victims and surviving family are emphasizing the “issue of trust” most of all. “The state’s obligation is to find out the true situation of those who died carrying out their duty to national defense, and if the real number of cases is more than expected at first, wouldn’t the common sense measure be to extend the time period and find out the truth?” said Kim Deok-jin, secretary-general of the Catholic Human Rights Committee.

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