Maybe this is why foreigners don’t get it

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Mon, December 4, 2023 | 11:29

Letter to the Editor

Maybe this is why foreigners don’t get it

Posted : 2012-08-28 16:56

Updated : 2012-08-28 16:56

Jason Lim (What the U.S. doesn’t get about Dokdo, Aug. 24) argues that Dokdo is an “article of faith with almost religious significance” and that the trauma of Japanese colonialism has been culturally internalized. This collective scar needs to be healed by Japanese contrition.

More often than not, however, “patients” want to “proactively’” ease their emotional scars, irrespective of what the direct aggressor does or says.

Relying on demands for Japanese contrition paradoxically makes South Korea reliant on Japan. Will South Korea (Korea) be doing this in 200 or 300 years time? With the ongoing “we are all affected as Koreans” mantra, the directly traumatic effects of historical colonialism are lessened through this moral equivalence implied in the belief in the unique “hanminjok.’’

Foreigners don’t understand why a confident South Korea should want to proactively define itself against Japan. Japan has apologized and a compensation pact was signed in 1965 between the governments.

Japan is the only country on the planet to have had two atomic bombs dropped on it. Korea was liberated and South Korea has won even more. Not many countries can say that, frankly. Most colonized countries still have the colonial language as their official language. Today, South Koreans wish to learn colonial English but to the Scots, Irish and Africans who experienced the destruction of their languages by England, Koreans should perhaps apologize to them. This is precisely how absurd such historical arguments can become.

Taking Japan to the International Courts does not seem to be something Seoul countenances. Maybe such trials would highlight divisions in “the we’’ within the Korean elite and Korean people during the colonial time.

Lim’s analogy with 9/11 is disingenuous. Comparing and contrasting who has the bigger moral claim to victimhood is not worthy.

With regard to natural resources, Lim doesn’t mention the question of sovereign ownership of the continental shelf of which Dokdo is merely the visible part.

Perhaps it would be even more patriotic to put political energy into alleviating poverty, investing in proper social safety nets and improving child care facilities in South Korea.

Dr. Iain Watson
Assistant Professor
Ajou University

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