East Asia Affairs

Some say that the release of the list is desirable for the Korean society to step forward to ``bright’’ future by clarifying its unsolved past while other argue that the criteria is too subjective.

``There might be some confusion in the society for the time being as many famous figures, who were known as good leaders to the public, were included in the list,’’ said Kim Dong-chun, professor at the SungKongHoe University in Seoul. ``But ultimately, it will contribute the social cohesion in the long term because we cannot move on to bright future until we have dealt with our untouched or unsolved past,’’ he added.

The professor also insisted that more studies should be conducted to distinguish `active collaborators’ and `passive collaborators’.

Kim Tae-un, a son of Kim Sang-ok, who is one of the greatest independence fighters against Japanese colonial rule, said that the government should take more actions to shed light on the issue.

``If Koreans had dealt with the issues appropriately, the issue wouldn’t linger on until now. The lukewarm Korean endeavor to punish the crimes of collaborators during the Japanese colonial period is the source of the problem,’’ he said.

``France executed over 2,000 pro-Nazi collaborators and imprisoned some 40,000 others. Most other nations sentenced tens of thousands of their citizens for collaborating with the Nazis through investigations that continued for decades. But for us, it is only beginning,’’ he added.

For those who oppose the revealing of the list argue that the criteria the institution set is too much `subjective’.

``I don’t know how much ex-president Park Chung-hee did collaborate with Japanese authorities when he was serving at the Japanese Army,’’ said Kim Ku-bu, an official at the Free Citizens’ Alliance of Korea.

``But it is not right to deny his contribution of the country’s economic development after he became the president of the country,’’ he said.

Another civic group official said the criteria is too much standardized so that it cannot be applied in general.

``The criteria categorizes every high-ranking government officials as pro-Japanese collaborators during the 1910-1945 colonial rule. It is too much standardized,’’ Hong Jin-pyo, an official at the Citizens United for Better Society.

A special committee, designed to punish pro-Japanese collaborators, was set up in 1949 but South Korea’s first president Syngman Rhee, who himself had been a leader in the anti-Japanese campaign, disbanded a special committee in the same year on the grounds that the time is not `ripe’ to deal with the thorny issue.

The 10-member commission, which lasted eight month, handled a total of 682 cases of pro-Japanese activities by Koreans under the Japanese colonial rule.

Among these, 559 cases were handed over to a special prosecutor's office, which handed down indictments in 221 cases. A special tribunal tried 38 cases, delivering guilty verdicts and punishments in 12 cases, including one death sentence. Eighteen others had their civil rights suspended, six others were declared innocent and the remaining two were found guilty but were exempted from punishment.

However, even these punishments were all in vain when the Supreme Court suspended their execution in March 1950, just before the 1950-53 Korean War.

Originally posted by Korea Times

Releasing a list of Japanese collaborators where the majority are already is cowardly.  Releasing the list without the complicated mess of a judge, jury or a trial of any kind, and plastering the names to the public makes me feel ill.