hankyoreh

By Park Ki-yong, staff reporter

New allegations of foul play in the 1975 death of journalist and activist Chang Chun-ha are prompting calls for a government investigation. In particular, many are saying likely Grand National Party presidential candidate Park Geun-hye needs to establish a fact-finding committee to answer unresolved questions about Chang’s death.

“The matter of clearing up Chang Chun-ha’s death isn’t just about righting the injustice suffered by one person,” said Kim Sam-woong, former president of the Independence Hall of Korea. “It is an imperative of history that we address this, the historical imperative that conscience must always triumph.”

Kim spoke to the Hankyoreh on August 15 at his home in Namyangju, a suburb of Seoul. Kim emphasized the historical importance of investigating Chang’s death. A former editor-in-chief of the Korea Daily News (the predecessor of today’s Seoul Sinmun) and member of the Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaborations for Japanese Imperialism, Kim has repeatedly alleged foul play in Chang’s death over the years, including in his book “A Critical Biography of Chang Chun-ha” (Sidae Books, 2009). He was also a member of a committee to investigate Chang’s death, chaired by lawmaker Han Kwang-ok, that was organized by the opposition Democratic Party in 1993 when the Kim Young-sam administration took office.

“There are limits to what an opposition investigation team can do, especially when it doesn’t have authority,” Kim said of the experience. “And when politicians do the investigating, their focus ends up more on publicizing the situation than on finding the truth.”

“More responsibility falls on the investigation team, which didn’t seem very sincere, and the ruling party, which was against forming a joint committee,” he added.

The 2004 Presidential Committee also ended up ruling the matter “impossible to determine,” since it had no authority to question the National Intelligence Service (the former KCIA) and other relevant organizations.

“We need to see a declaration of conscience from people who were in power at the time of Chang Chun-ha’s death,” Kim said. When independence leader Kim Koo was assassinated, he added, there was tacit or outright approval from then-president Rhee Syngman. He also noted the silence from the supreme leadership when Kim Dae-jung, a political rival of Park Chung-hee, was kidnapped.

“It needs to be determined whether this kind of thing is possible due simply to extreme loyalty to the main leader,” he said.

To the Park dictatorship in the 1960s and ’70s, Chang was a troubling figure, Kim said. Called the “president in exile” by some, he was a nuisance that the regime would have been glad to be rid of.

“Chang Chun-ha was the single most critical intellectual under the Park regime, and the first people to do the things that were banned,” Kim said. “If Kim Dae-jung was Park Chung-hee’s political rival, then Chang Chun-ha was his philosophical rival.”

Park was in an awkward position, perceiving himself as Chang’s moral inferior. Whereas Park served as a first lieutenant in the Manchurian Army, going so far as to sign a blood oath to do so, Chang had been drafted into the Japanese Army as a student soldier and eventually escaped, trudging 2,400 kilometers to the headquarters of the provisional government in Shanghai. After Korea’s independence, Park ended up taking power as president through a military coup. Meanwhile, Chang served as former provisional government leader Kim Koo’s secretary before going on to face off against the Rhee administration under the banner of a free press with the journal “Sasanggye (World of Thought),” for which he served as editor. His goal with the monthly journal was to discover the “spirit of the people,” and it ended up playing a crucial role in stoking the uprising of April 19, 1960, with more than 100,000 copies sold, a record for the day. He continued raising the hackles of the Park administration after the coup.

Kim Sam-woong urged Park Geun-hye, the daughter of Park Chung-hee, to take action in investigating Chang’s death. He noted his own experience of meeting the daughter of Francisco Franco during a visit to Spain around a decade ago. Then in her seventies, the daughter was gathering information on her father’s misdeeds.

“She said she was doing it to repent for the wrongs her father did to his own citizens,” Kim said. “I think that if you want to become the leader of a country, you need to show yourself making a definite break with the unsavory aspects of the Park Chung-hee administration. It isn’t proper for a public figure to inherit all the good qualities while excusing or covering up the bad ones.”

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