Newest Truth and Reconciliation Committee is in the news.

The Marmot's Hole posted a little entry today linking to an article on South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and its efforts at investigating some 1,222 probable incidents of mass execution without trial. The entire article is really worth a read, and can be found here, but I'll just point out a few paragraphs pertaining to Jeollanam-do.

Chung Nam Sook, 80, said that in December 1950, soldiers of South Korea's 11th Army Division stormed his village in Hampyong, in the southwest of the country, to hunt Communist guerrillas. North Korean collaborators had already fled, but the soldiers rounded up the remaining villagers in a field.

"They told us to light our cigarettes. Then they began shooting their rifles and machine guns," Chung said. "After a while, an officer called out, 'Any of you who are still alive can stand up and go home now.' Those who did were shot again."

Despite seven bullet wounds, Chung survived by pretending to be dead under the heap of bodies. In July, the truth commission called the killings at Hampyong a "crime against humanity" and told the government to apologize and build a monument for the victims.

Both sides in the war were accused of killing large numbers of unarmed civilians and of using terror to force people into compliance as villages across the country fell and were retaken.

For instance, South Korean police officers disguised as a North Korean unit entered villages at Naju, near Hampyong, in July 1950, and when people welcomed them with Communist flags, killed 97, the commission said.

As their town changed hands between the rival armies, villagers who had lost family members were quick to settle scores. More than 50 years later, families still hold grudges.

This part of the country has had a violent 20th century. Before the Korean War, thousasnds were killed in the Yosu-Sunchon Incident (여수사건) of 1948, which was a response to the Jeju Massacre some 7 months earlier (for which President Roh apologized in 2003) which claimed between 14,000 and 30,000 deceased or missing, according to "The National Committee for the Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident." You can find placards around Suncheon that point out the sites of notable events during the rebellion (in front of Suncheon Station, for example, or behind the language center of Suncheon National University).

Anyway, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee is apparently just involved in research and investigation and, according to the IHT article quoted above, "unlike the South African agency, Korea's commission has no power to prosecute crimes or grant immunity."

It does, evidentally, make policy recommendations, as the Marmot's Hole ran another story on the very same Truth and Reconciliation Committee. They have recommended that the Korean government take steps to demand compensation from the US for a 1951 bombing in Gyeongsangbuk-do that killed 51 villagers. In the Marmot's words,

I was thinking 36,000 dead, 92,000 wounded, 8,000 MIA and half a century of security guarantees backed up by US troops might be compensation enough. Apparently, I was wrong.

Lest anyone forget, a month ago President Roh said that North Korea should not have to apologize for past transgressions. According to him (via Yonhap):

“There is a disparity between (the South) asking (the North) for an apology and inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation. I want to ask advocates of a North Korean apology if they are opposed to inter-Korean peace,” Roh was quoted by his spokesperson as saying in a meeting with foreign correspondents based in Seoul.

“North Korea’s apology (for past wrongdoings) is a difficult question. In case of the end of a war, the loser is supposed to atone for the war damage and be liable for making an apology. But North Korea did not lose the war. It is not legally realistic to demand the North’s apology,” said Roh.

Yet another Korean truth commission, we should remember, cleared 83 of 148 Koreans war criminals---as found by the Allies---of responsibility and wrong-doing for their actions in World War II. 37% of Allied POWs perished at the hands of their captors---among whom Koreans were especially notorious---yet that commission found that these men were victims themselves, "saddled," as the Marmot put it, "by the Japanese with responsibility for the abuse of Allied POWs, and hence had to suffer the “double pain” of forced mobilization AND becoming a war criminal." The links to the original Korea Herald article and Michael Breen's Korea Times rebuttal are broken, so instead I'll just quote what Oranckay had to say on it:

What annoys me is that one hears sympathy for men who would be called collaborators if they had been working in prisons that held fellow Koreans during colonial rule. Their prisoners were (largely) white, however, so they are afforded as much understanding as possible. And they get to be called “victims.”

These select few incidents reveal an inability for accurate self-reflection that you often find in matters of history. It's worth revisiting an October article by top Koreanist Dr. Andrei Lankov (via The Grand Narrative blog):

Every foreign resident of Korea is exposed to a number of habitual Korean statements, which reflect Korean ideas about themselves and their nation. Many of these beliefs are true, some are not so well founded, while others are strange — like, say, the well-known tendency of Koreans to boast that their country “has four distinct seasons” as if this is something unusual and unknown to most other countries of the globe.

One such oft-repeated statement is that Korea has always suffered invasions and wars. Koreans often say, “Our history has been tragic, for centuries we have been invaded by powerful enemies and suffered in their hands greatly.” Every visitor to Korea is bound to hear such a remark sooner or later, and most people tend to take it at face value. This statement might correctly describe Korean history of the last one hundred years, but it is hardly applicable to earlier eras.

But why did such a view develop? There might be few reasons, but I suspect that Korean intellectuals of the 1950s or 1960s were shocked by the turbulent nature
of the last hundred years of Korea history (to be more precise, the period between 1865 and 1960). This came as a sharp contrast to the tranquility and predictability of earlier times. This shock made Koreans believe that their history has always been that difficult and hard. And, of course, Korean nationalists used these feelings for their own gains. But this is another story.
. .

We also see this opportunistic attitude of Korean nationalists when it comes to the topic of Japanese collaborators (친일파) and comfort women, although a complete analysis of either issue is well beyond the means of this humble blogger. Suffice it to say, there is a lack of transparency when it comes to Korean history "as told by Koreans" that ranks it right up there with the best the Chinese and Japanese have to offer. I'm skeptical about the potential for any truth and/or reconciliation that may arise in the hearts of the majority of Koreans as a result of any of these committees.