Frog in a Well

Near Kwanghwamun this afternoon there were a number of nationalist Anti-China placards set up. Could China someday become the new Japan? I think it is too early yet. A few decades of colonial rule has a more lasting effect than a historiographical squabble or two.

Our happy history. Don’t travel to China!

That monster in the Han river was perhaps not created by the US military as the recent blockbuster movie suggests…It is in fact China! The poster lists the major historical issues with China: 백두산, 고조선, 고구려, and 발해.

Seodaemun prison was open to the public today and as I write this posting various patriotic performances are underway on the grounds of a prison where the prisoners of the Japanese colonial regime and the postwar dictators of South Korea lived, died, and were horribly tortured.

Cutouts of “Righteous Army” fighters could be found near the entrance with removable heads so that any patriotic visitor could pose for a patriotic picture.

If the poorly armed righteous armies, which were sometimes hard to distinguish from violent bandits when they raided villages for food, are not your kind of independence fighter, you can also pose with other pro-independence terrorists¹ found elsewhere on the prison grounds.

1. For a discussion on current definitions of this contentious word see this Wikipedia article or see some of the Google offerings. For more on a recent controversy over the use of this term see this article and the response of the accused, which also mentions the changes in meaning of the word across time. The response to the response can be found here.  ↩

Leaflet being handed out near the Japanese embassy today:

On every trip I have made to Korea I have come across leaflets handed out at station exits accusing some distinguished person of being a pro-Japanese traitor (친일 매국노) but I think this is the first whose alleged treason was committed during my own lifetime.

I didn’t attend the liberation day festivities last night or the ones that continue outside city hall as I write this posting. I did drop by this morning, however, and was able to catch sight of the massive plastic redecorating of the building:

We were also in time to watch what I think has to be the absolute worst martial art performance I have ever seen just outside the entrance.

We also witnessed the departure of a large group of 국민대학교 students leave on some kind of patriotic hike, complete with flags attached. I am always impressed at the willingness of young people to dress up in the same T-shirts and, in this case, to almost all use the exact same brand of backpack.

It’s August 15th hear in Korea and you know what that means? It is a time to celebrate Korea’s independence from its colonial master in 1945 and some argue that more efforts should be made to remember that this day was also when the Republic of Korea was officially established in 1948. As with many national holidays like it around the world, it is most of all a time for nationalism in all of its manifestations.

It is time to waste massive amounts of pink and white colored plastic to cover Seoul’s city hall with the national flower. It is a time for for a group of flag draped youth to perform some kind of Tai Chi-looking dance outside of city hall so badly one wonders if they even bothered practicing. It is time to call Kim Dae-jung a pro-Japanese traitor for bowing to an image of the dead emperor Hirohito in 1989. It is time to burn two different brands of Japanese incense at the altars of dead independence activists. It is time to pose for pictures behind headless cutouts of armed anti-Japanese activists. It is time to call for boycotts on trips to China for their government’s historiographical imperialism. It is time to confiscate the land of descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators. It is time to remove Japanese derived technical words from your military vocabulary. It is time to remove flags from glass cases in the schools because such a heinous practice is a remnant of the Japanese colonial period.

In the next few postings I’ll a few more details on the day’s events, along with some of news related to the celebrations in the Korean media.