hankyoreh

The cover of the book “Reading Together: The Modern History of East Asia”

Two diplomats from countries neighboring the Korean Peninsula — China and Japan — shared complaints about South Korea and its diplomacy on almost the exact same day.

Xing Haiming, the Chinese ambassador to South Korea, urged Seoul to “follow the current tide” in his rebuttal of remarks made in an interview by Yoon Seok-youl, who is considered one of the leading contenders in next year’s presidential race.

The same day that article went out, Hiroshisa Soma, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese embassy in South Korea, derided South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s foreign policy as “masturbation” during a dinner with reporters.

Perhaps Xing and Soma have their own ideas about when things were “better”: before the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system deployment in Xing’s case, before the Moon presidency in Soma’s.

Few would dispute that East Asia needs a peaceful regional order for the sake of shared prosperity and peace in the future, or that we need to forge new identities as Asians to achieve this. But the process of historical reconciliation that needs to happen before those goals are achieved is by no means simple.

A simple look at the reality today for South Korea, China, and Japan shows that history isn’t just something for textbooks but a crucial condition determining the present and future.

The modern and contemporary Asian historical experience is a complex mix of colonizers and colonized, ruling and being ruled, infliction of and victimization by state violence, and cases where victims have themselves become aggressors at times. Indeed, it is possible for a party to be both victim and aggressor at the same time in relations between states or among the people within a state — as we’ve seen with Japan’s war of aggression and colonization of other Asian countries, South Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War, China’s occupation of Tibet and invasion of Vietnam, and Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia.

The nature of state authority is such that it is quite difficult for any country to voluntarily reflect on and acknowledge its own mistakes so that it can proceed toward historical reconciliation.

But in every country, there are people within civil society who take the first steps toward reflecting on their country’s history of aggression and work toward entering a path of peace and coexistence.

It’s a process that can mature and progress further when it is joined by a leader who is committed and has a peaceful vision for the future so that those efforts do not end up as an isolated social phenomenon. In fact, there have been excellent examples of this kind of historical reconciliation, as in the cases of Germany and France or Germany and Poland.

Even in the case of South Korea, China, and Japan, there was indeed a time when things were “better” than they are now. In the days when civil society efforts were starting to bear fruit, we saw publications like “Facing South Korea and Japanese History” (Sakyejul), “History to Open Up the Future” (Hankyoreh), and “East Asian Modern and Contemporary History Co-Written by South Korea, China, and Japan” (Humanist).

But alongside these historical reconciliation efforts by civil society, there was also a backlash against them and attempts to exploit them for political ends.

Ever since the furor over textbooks published by the company Fusosha, Japan has adopted an approach of historical revisionism, denouncing reflective nationalism as a “self-flagellating” historical perspective. China, which has been competing with the US for global dominance, has shared a new vision but hurt its own image as a major power by stirring up needless conflicts with its neighbors through its so-called “wolf warrior diplomacy” tactics.

The exclusionary form of patriotism that has surfaced in China has raised further questions about where there is enough of a civil society there to contribute to historical reconciliation.

I have often criticized South Korea’s lack of efforts to understand and inform ourselves about other regions and countries. I still think we are not doing enough in that regard, but I also have to ask what efforts China and Japan are making with South Korea, if only in comparison with our own inadequacies.

By Jun Sung-won, editor of Yellow Sea Literature

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