Peoples movements to punish collaborators faced some challenges as US settled in Korea and established its military government after the liberation. Like Japanese colonial authorities, US controlled all fields of South Korean society, and with USs policy of anti-communist and anti-soviet union, they decided to keep all the bureaucratic institutions and personnel under Japanese colonial government. Following with controversy over Trusteeship, two political groups appeared right and left wings right wingers were mostly collaborators with anti-trusteeships. Since US wanted to make Korea pursuing their anti-communist policy, they protected the anti-communist right wingers in Korea, centered by President Rhee and Democratic Party. In addition, as Korea society suffered from the total destruction on their living during the Korean war, the extreme ring wingers spread the idea that all the cause of poverty, illness and disorder is due to the communists in North and thus the lefts anyone, even their family members, who supported the left and criticized the political regime are considered pro-communists. This strong propaganda with the conflicts of two ideologies made collaborators rise into stronger social and political positions and suppressed issues of movements to punish collaborators. The power of collaborators had remained for many political decades during Rhee, Park, Chun, and Rohs regimes. However, the issue of the movements to punish the collaborators re-emerged during the 1990s, after the political structures had been changed into more democratization. The new goal of movements to deal with issue of collaborators had been settled to reconciliation inside South Korea, between North and South Korea, and outside Korea. I will discuss the evolutions of both collaborators and movements to punish the collaborators under the changes of political circumstance I will examine why the collaborators could not have been punished in Korea, and how and in what ways many Koreans have attempted to punish the collaborators.
The problem started with the invasion of Korea by Japan and the subsequent colonization that caused the country to be divided into two groups the collaborators and the anti-invasion movement. Colonization resulted in a political dictatorship and dependence. This did not go down well with those against the invasion but those who collaborated had their own reasons for doing so. Collaborators associated with the imperialist at different times and also performed different functions. For this reason they are divided into three groups.
There are those who participated in the invasion and the subsequent colonization of Korea between 1905 and 1910. These are the leaders of the pro-Japanese organizations and those who participated in the establishment and the signing of the two treaties the protectorate treaty of 1905 and the Korea-Japan annexation treaty of 1910. Others are those who cooperated with Japan through movements as Coup dEtat of 1884, the Independence Club and others. The second group assisted Japan in occupying Korea from annexation in 1910 to the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937. These were mainly government and public officials of high level authorities and the leaders of the pro-Japanese organizations. The last category of collaborators is that which actively participated in war from the second Sino-Japanese war to the liberation.
They either served in the Japanese army or supported the war materially and financially. Individuals decision to collaborate were voluntary, others did so because of the looming danger upon them threats or because they were forced to. The reason for the collaboration of the mentioned groups was the Japans Imperial policy they supported the collaborators and the pro-Japanese organization. This made many Koreans to collaborate in pursuit of their individual interests as protection, employment, promotion of status, and the creation of business opportunities. Another reason for this was the notion that after loosing their sovereignty, they would still raise their political and economic strength by collaborating with the Japanese, hence their formation of the Self-Strengthening Movement. They accepted domination with a hope civilization and modernization. They felt they were inferior to the Japanese and the assimilation policy advanced to them by the invader was too lucrative as they had a feeling that they would now be treated the same way with the Japanese. In addition the cultural policy implemented by the imperialists made them believe they could still prosper under their rule. With the hope of civilization, modernization and development, the Koreans sacrificed their social justice and their independence.
While others opted to collaborate, a larger group of the Koreans joined forces to resist the Japanese invasion. Their national pride could not let them accept the invasion just like that and they had to do something to regain their lost sovereignty. They felt those who aided in the annexation of their country, the signing of the Protectorate Treaty and the forcing of King Gojong to give out power had sold their country for their selfish interests and decided to turn their anger on them. They had always considered Japan as an enemy within their border from the time the Japanese Wako attacked them in 1592. Their centralized nation and outstanding unity for more than 1300 years based on their cultural tradition was a major factor in their powerful resistance to Japanese invasion through the formation of an anti-Japanese nationalist movement.
Some of these organizations include the Korean Provincial Government largely involved in the rebuilding of the nation, the League of Korean Independence, the Society for the Restoration of the Nation, League of National Restoration and others. They all had common codes of action against the collaborators. The action was executed by the armed independence army. The growing anger on those who associated with the imperialist in manipulating and oppressing their country men made them act against collaborators through physical punishments. They assassinated the collaborators and confiscated their property. They also denied them voting rights and declared them unelectable to public positions after the liberation. The lack of security and the increasing social disorder as a result of ousting the colonizer gave rise to the attacks against the collaborators. Those used by the Japanese to spy, police officers, officials and the leaders of the pro-imperialist movements were targeted to be assassinated. Even after liberation, those who had collaborated with the imperialists were still a target as the anti-imperialist felt they attained their positions under the Japanese and these attacks shows the much the anti-imperialists hated them. The individual and group attacks on the collaborators showed the shared responsibility among the anti-imperialists in punishing the collaborators. They were real traitors to the nation and they deserved to be punished.
As much as the anti-imperialist tried to punish the collaborators, it was not that easy getting them as it became hard to establish and implement the policies for punishing them. A major obstacle in this was the presence of the Unites States Armed Forces that established an American Military Government in South Korea on September 1945 which dominated all fields of the Korean society from legislation, administration, and the judiciary. They maintained the colonial legacy by inheriting the bureaucratic personnel and institutions from the colonial government. This made impossible for the anti-imperialist to punish the collaborators as the military government protected them and even encouraged the re-employment of the collaborators in their government. This meant permission had to be sought from them before punishing any collaborator. The case was different in North Korea as the removal of the colonial legacy was achieved with much ease with the support from the local authorities and the Soviet military forces. Another factor that complicated the punishing of these collaborators was the contentious issue over trusteeship reached at the Moscow conference. The two groups the left and right wingers took opposing positions and this diverted attention from the unresolved issue of punishing the collaborators. The right wingers were against the trusteeship and said their stand was aimed at achieving national independence and argued that those for it were against the nation. As a result the people and political groups resorted were divided into two opposing groups those pro-nationalists and those anti-nationalists. This made the issue of punishing the collaborators to be temporarily forgotten. The fight for anti-trusteeship presented the right wingers as patriots and nationalists and this made the efforts of the left wingers in fighting for liberation to be forgotten as their pro-trusteeship position was against the nation interest. Another contributing factor to the complicated issue of punishing the collaborators is that, even after Korea had been liberated from the imperialist, there was still a problem in deciding who was right, between the pro-imperialists and the anti-imperialists, to lead the liberated nation.
Kim Gu and Syngman Rhee who were among the right wing political leaders supported the establishment of an independent Korean government saying it was necessary step before the purging of the collaborators. On the contrary, the left wingers argued that the collaborators ought to be excluded from participating in the establishment of the independent government as they had participated in the loss of its sovereignty. This position taken by the left was much more aggressive towards purging of the collaborators and they even went ahead to specify the criteria of determine who were the collaborators. An advisory council of the USAMGIK, the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly (SKILA) formed to come up with a plan of punishing the collaborators, was composed only of the right wing representatives. They came up with a bill,
A Special Law Concerning Traitors of the Nation, Pro-Japanese Collaborators, and Racketeers which laid down a way and the regulations for dealing with the collaborators. The bill received a huge objection from the rightists and therefore its scope and the level of punishment of the collaborators were greatly reduced it was made to be friendlier. Despite this, the bill could have cleared the issue of collaborators if it had been passed by the USAMGIK because the agreement had bee reached from various political divides of Korea.
The USAMGIK was never supportive of the punishing of the collaborators as they argued that it was the only way these Koreans could have survived the colonialists. The other reason was that the services of these individuals had been necessary during the colonial period as they were knowledgeable and skilled and at the time there was scarcity of such trained personnel. In addition, it was hard to identify who had participated in the collaboration activities. The refusal of the military government to pass the bill showed the much the United States wanted to protect the pro-imperialists who were largely the members of the Korean Democratic Party under the leadership of Syngman Rhee. This made the efforts to punish the collaborators after liberation a total failure. As it has been explained above, the transformation of the collaborators into patriots by acting against the trusteeship, their coalition with the United States and their subsequent protection, their punishment was able to be suppressed and the peoples fight to establish a national spirit in addressing the colonial social injustices by purging the collaborators was never realized.
The fight to punish the collaborators was never going to end especially with the handing over of the bill that the USAMGIK refused to implement to the Constitutional National Assembly and its subsequent passing to law the Special Act on the Punishment of Collaborationists Activities against the Nation. The legislation was enacted through the efforts of the representatives of a younger generation who felt there was really a need to address the colonial injustices done by the collaborators in fostering the spirit of the Korean nation and in bringing them together for the sake of continued development. It received a lot of support from the people and organizations angered by the collaborators actions that they saw as walking scotch free and were not remorseful for their shameless actions. The bill was promulgated in September 1948 despite the objections from those who supported the actions of the pro-imperialists. The Anti-collaboration Committee was then established by the National Assembly to oversee the investigation of the collaborationists activities. They also appointed a judge and a prosecutor to try them and to enforce this special law. This saw the arrest of Bak Heung-sik, a comprador capitalist, on January 8, 1949 and the prosecution of Yi Gi-yong. This raised opposition from most of the collaborators and their associated organizations especially the Korean Democratic Party. They tried by all means to hinder the implementation of the law and the activities of the Anti-collaboration committee through demonstrations and other mass actions. They even attempted to assassinate one of the members of the committee. The highest objections came from the Korean police as most of them had participated largely in the pro-imperialists army activities. Rhee increased the effort to resist the committees actions by making public statements especially the revealing of the spy activities of the committee on the collaborators and because of this, he used his constitutional power to force the police arrest the members of the committee over the allegation. This halted the trial of the collaborators and the revision of the act to reduce the period of prosecution to one year. This meant the task of punishing the collaborators ended in one year.
The information above outlines the various ways the collaborators and their associates tried to avoid the punishment and succeeded. On the top is Rhee efforts with his Korean democratic party and the government persistent and opposition and interference which led to a reduced number of collaborators being tried and sentenced. Even those who were sentenced still escaped with shorter periods of staying behind the bars.
With the termination of the Anti-collaborationists Committee, they still obtained a legal exemption. The rising up to powerful government positions by some leaders of the pro-imperialists made them to continue backing up anticommunists dictatorships. Statistics show that the high ranking public officials in the Korean government were mostly who had collaborated with the colonialists. More so, they had taken up most of the economy, media, education, culture, art and religion in the recent Korea. This has made it difficult to address the issue of collaborators and the much needed reconciliation to enable the country come together in order to grow economically. Worst is the fact that the collaborator-led government has accorded too much respect to them by treating as heroes who greatly contributed to the nation in fighting communism they are buried in the National Cemetery. They were also given awards as national heroes who helped the nation towards liberation. In addition, their lives have always been celebrated in the post colonial Korea through various projects by building statues, monuments and others of the sort. The descendants of others such as Yi Wan-Yong and Song Byeong-jun have been able to recover their lost property successfully through filing of lawsuits.
The problem of the collaborationists became hard to resolve especially with the rising to power by Rhee. The situation was further worsened by the disappearance of various publications such as the Progressive Journal Sasanggye founded by Jang Jun-Ha, a progressive nationalist and democracy fighter, in 1953. The April revolution of 1960 restarted the whole issue again and two interrelated factors were the cause of this. One was the establishment of the uprising the National Democratic Movement that sought to make Korea regain the lost sovereignty, and the other was the establishment of a military regime after the uprising had been defeated that pursuit improved diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan. The latter provoked the need to establish the root causes of the problems between the two nations which was the unresolved issue of pro-imperialists. But it was until the founding of Park Chung-hee when the problem was actively examined.
The student-led National Democratic Movement criticized Parks regime as anti-nationalist for it depended on foreign countries especially Japan. In addition, Kim argued that the failure to resolve the issue of collaborators allowed the colonial legacy to remain and resulted in dictatorship as exercised by Rhee and had been a barrier to realizing a democratized Korean nation. The fall of Parks regime gave space to spirited fight to resolve the issue. Studies on the pending issue were resuscitated such as those carried by Im Jong-guk and the Institute for Research on Anti-National Activities that gathered and examined historical documents on the issue. The findings on individual and organizational activities of the collaborators during the colonial and the post colonial era have been able to be published and hence made available to everyone. An example is the airing of a three part series by the MBC Television station called Banmin Teugwi (Anti-collaboration Committee). The increased public attention in examining the problem of collaborators has always been the source of the calls to finishing the task of punishing the collaborators which is seen as the root cause of the pain and all the misfortunes experienced by the liberated Korea. Various groups including civil and labor organizations have been carrying out the campaign setting the history straight as they try to push for the uncovering of the activities of the collaborators and the need to bring about a social change for the sake of the nation. They have been able to counter the actions of the collaborationists through petitions, advertisements, protests, campaigns, and academic reports. Another fight was initiated by the Press reform movement to push for the removal of the traces of collaborationists legacies. A dictionary is also to be compiled to remove the colonial legacy, to aid in the settlement of the issue by ensuring that no same mistakes are committed in future though assessment of past actions, and to help in building a just society.
The problem started with the invasion of Korea by Japan and the subsequent colonization that caused the country to be divided into two groups the collaborators and the anti-invasion movement. Colonization resulted in a political dictatorship and dependence. This did not go down well with those against the invasion but those who collaborated had their own reasons for doing so. Collaborators associated with the imperialist at different times and also performed different functions. For this reason they are divided into three groups.
There are those who participated in the invasion and the subsequent colonization of Korea between 1905 and 1910. These are the leaders of the pro-Japanese organizations and those who participated in the establishment and the signing of the two treaties the protectorate treaty of 1905 and the Korea-Japan annexation treaty of 1910. Others are those who cooperated with Japan through movements as Coup dEtat of 1884, the Independence Club and others. The second group assisted Japan in occupying Korea from annexation in 1910 to the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937. These were mainly government and public officials of high level authorities and the leaders of the pro-Japanese organizations. The last category of collaborators is that which actively participated in war from the second Sino-Japanese war to the liberation.
They either served in the Japanese army or supported the war materially and financially. Individuals decision to collaborate were voluntary, others did so because of the looming danger upon them threats or because they were forced to. The reason for the collaboration of the mentioned groups was the Japans Imperial policy they supported the collaborators and the pro-Japanese organization. This made many Koreans to collaborate in pursuit of their individual interests as protection, employment, promotion of status, and the creation of business opportunities. Another reason for this was the notion that after loosing their sovereignty, they would still raise their political and economic strength by collaborating with the Japanese, hence their formation of the Self-Strengthening Movement. They accepted domination with a hope civilization and modernization. They felt they were inferior to the Japanese and the assimilation policy advanced to them by the invader was too lucrative as they had a feeling that they would now be treated the same way with the Japanese. In addition the cultural policy implemented by the imperialists made them believe they could still prosper under their rule. With the hope of civilization, modernization and development, the Koreans sacrificed their social justice and their independence.
While others opted to collaborate, a larger group of the Koreans joined forces to resist the Japanese invasion. Their national pride could not let them accept the invasion just like that and they had to do something to regain their lost sovereignty. They felt those who aided in the annexation of their country, the signing of the Protectorate Treaty and the forcing of King Gojong to give out power had sold their country for their selfish interests and decided to turn their anger on them. They had always considered Japan as an enemy within their border from the time the Japanese Wako attacked them in 1592. Their centralized nation and outstanding unity for more than 1300 years based on their cultural tradition was a major factor in their powerful resistance to Japanese invasion through the formation of an anti-Japanese nationalist movement.
Some of these organizations include the Korean Provincial Government largely involved in the rebuilding of the nation, the League of Korean Independence, the Society for the Restoration of the Nation, League of National Restoration and others. They all had common codes of action against the collaborators. The action was executed by the armed independence army. The growing anger on those who associated with the imperialist in manipulating and oppressing their country men made them act against collaborators through physical punishments. They assassinated the collaborators and confiscated their property. They also denied them voting rights and declared them unelectable to public positions after the liberation. The lack of security and the increasing social disorder as a result of ousting the colonizer gave rise to the attacks against the collaborators. Those used by the Japanese to spy, police officers, officials and the leaders of the pro-imperialist movements were targeted to be assassinated. Even after liberation, those who had collaborated with the imperialists were still a target as the anti-imperialist felt they attained their positions under the Japanese and these attacks shows the much the anti-imperialists hated them. The individual and group attacks on the collaborators showed the shared responsibility among the anti-imperialists in punishing the collaborators. They were real traitors to the nation and they deserved to be punished.
As much as the anti-imperialist tried to punish the collaborators, it was not that easy getting them as it became hard to establish and implement the policies for punishing them. A major obstacle in this was the presence of the Unites States Armed Forces that established an American Military Government in South Korea on September 1945 which dominated all fields of the Korean society from legislation, administration, and the judiciary. They maintained the colonial legacy by inheriting the bureaucratic personnel and institutions from the colonial government. This made impossible for the anti-imperialist to punish the collaborators as the military government protected them and even encouraged the re-employment of the collaborators in their government. This meant permission had to be sought from them before punishing any collaborator. The case was different in North Korea as the removal of the colonial legacy was achieved with much ease with the support from the local authorities and the Soviet military forces. Another factor that complicated the punishing of these collaborators was the contentious issue over trusteeship reached at the Moscow conference. The two groups the left and right wingers took opposing positions and this diverted attention from the unresolved issue of punishing the collaborators. The right wingers were against the trusteeship and said their stand was aimed at achieving national independence and argued that those for it were against the nation. As a result the people and political groups resorted were divided into two opposing groups those pro-nationalists and those anti-nationalists. This made the issue of punishing the collaborators to be temporarily forgotten. The fight for anti-trusteeship presented the right wingers as patriots and nationalists and this made the efforts of the left wingers in fighting for liberation to be forgotten as their pro-trusteeship position was against the nation interest. Another contributing factor to the complicated issue of punishing the collaborators is that, even after Korea had been liberated from the imperialist, there was still a problem in deciding who was right, between the pro-imperialists and the anti-imperialists, to lead the liberated nation.
Kim Gu and Syngman Rhee who were among the right wing political leaders supported the establishment of an independent Korean government saying it was necessary step before the purging of the collaborators. On the contrary, the left wingers argued that the collaborators ought to be excluded from participating in the establishment of the independent government as they had participated in the loss of its sovereignty. This position taken by the left was much more aggressive towards purging of the collaborators and they even went ahead to specify the criteria of determine who were the collaborators. An advisory council of the USAMGIK, the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly (SKILA) formed to come up with a plan of punishing the collaborators, was composed only of the right wing representatives. They came up with a bill,
A Special Law Concerning Traitors of the Nation, Pro-Japanese Collaborators, and Racketeers which laid down a way and the regulations for dealing with the collaborators. The bill received a huge objection from the rightists and therefore its scope and the level of punishment of the collaborators were greatly reduced it was made to be friendlier. Despite this, the bill could have cleared the issue of collaborators if it had been passed by the USAMGIK because the agreement had bee reached from various political divides of Korea.
The USAMGIK was never supportive of the punishing of the collaborators as they argued that it was the only way these Koreans could have survived the colonialists. The other reason was that the services of these individuals had been necessary during the colonial period as they were knowledgeable and skilled and at the time there was scarcity of such trained personnel. In addition, it was hard to identify who had participated in the collaboration activities. The refusal of the military government to pass the bill showed the much the United States wanted to protect the pro-imperialists who were largely the members of the Korean Democratic Party under the leadership of Syngman Rhee. This made the efforts to punish the collaborators after liberation a total failure. As it has been explained above, the transformation of the collaborators into patriots by acting against the trusteeship, their coalition with the United States and their subsequent protection, their punishment was able to be suppressed and the peoples fight to establish a national spirit in addressing the colonial social injustices by purging the collaborators was never realized.
The fight to punish the collaborators was never going to end especially with the handing over of the bill that the USAMGIK refused to implement to the Constitutional National Assembly and its subsequent passing to law the Special Act on the Punishment of Collaborationists Activities against the Nation. The legislation was enacted through the efforts of the representatives of a younger generation who felt there was really a need to address the colonial injustices done by the collaborators in fostering the spirit of the Korean nation and in bringing them together for the sake of continued development. It received a lot of support from the people and organizations angered by the collaborators actions that they saw as walking scotch free and were not remorseful for their shameless actions. The bill was promulgated in September 1948 despite the objections from those who supported the actions of the pro-imperialists. The Anti-collaboration Committee was then established by the National Assembly to oversee the investigation of the collaborationists activities. They also appointed a judge and a prosecutor to try them and to enforce this special law. This saw the arrest of Bak Heung-sik, a comprador capitalist, on January 8, 1949 and the prosecution of Yi Gi-yong. This raised opposition from most of the collaborators and their associated organizations especially the Korean Democratic Party. They tried by all means to hinder the implementation of the law and the activities of the Anti-collaboration committee through demonstrations and other mass actions. They even attempted to assassinate one of the members of the committee. The highest objections came from the Korean police as most of them had participated largely in the pro-imperialists army activities. Rhee increased the effort to resist the committees actions by making public statements especially the revealing of the spy activities of the committee on the collaborators and because of this, he used his constitutional power to force the police arrest the members of the committee over the allegation. This halted the trial of the collaborators and the revision of the act to reduce the period of prosecution to one year. This meant the task of punishing the collaborators ended in one year.
The information above outlines the various ways the collaborators and their associates tried to avoid the punishment and succeeded. On the top is Rhee efforts with his Korean democratic party and the government persistent and opposition and interference which led to a reduced number of collaborators being tried and sentenced. Even those who were sentenced still escaped with shorter periods of staying behind the bars.
With the termination of the Anti-collaborationists Committee, they still obtained a legal exemption. The rising up to powerful government positions by some leaders of the pro-imperialists made them to continue backing up anticommunists dictatorships. Statistics show that the high ranking public officials in the Korean government were mostly who had collaborated with the colonialists. More so, they had taken up most of the economy, media, education, culture, art and religion in the recent Korea. This has made it difficult to address the issue of collaborators and the much needed reconciliation to enable the country come together in order to grow economically. Worst is the fact that the collaborator-led government has accorded too much respect to them by treating as heroes who greatly contributed to the nation in fighting communism they are buried in the National Cemetery. They were also given awards as national heroes who helped the nation towards liberation. In addition, their lives have always been celebrated in the post colonial Korea through various projects by building statues, monuments and others of the sort. The descendants of others such as Yi Wan-Yong and Song Byeong-jun have been able to recover their lost property successfully through filing of lawsuits.
The problem of the collaborationists became hard to resolve especially with the rising to power by Rhee. The situation was further worsened by the disappearance of various publications such as the Progressive Journal Sasanggye founded by Jang Jun-Ha, a progressive nationalist and democracy fighter, in 1953. The April revolution of 1960 restarted the whole issue again and two interrelated factors were the cause of this. One was the establishment of the uprising the National Democratic Movement that sought to make Korea regain the lost sovereignty, and the other was the establishment of a military regime after the uprising had been defeated that pursuit improved diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan. The latter provoked the need to establish the root causes of the problems between the two nations which was the unresolved issue of pro-imperialists. But it was until the founding of Park Chung-hee when the problem was actively examined.
The student-led National Democratic Movement criticized Parks regime as anti-nationalist for it depended on foreign countries especially Japan. In addition, Kim argued that the failure to resolve the issue of collaborators allowed the colonial legacy to remain and resulted in dictatorship as exercised by Rhee and had been a barrier to realizing a democratized Korean nation. The fall of Parks regime gave space to spirited fight to resolve the issue. Studies on the pending issue were resuscitated such as those carried by Im Jong-guk and the Institute for Research on Anti-National Activities that gathered and examined historical documents on the issue. The findings on individual and organizational activities of the collaborators during the colonial and the post colonial era have been able to be published and hence made available to everyone. An example is the airing of a three part series by the MBC Television station called Banmin Teugwi (Anti-collaboration Committee). The increased public attention in examining the problem of collaborators has always been the source of the calls to finishing the task of punishing the collaborators which is seen as the root cause of the pain and all the misfortunes experienced by the liberated Korea. Various groups including civil and labor organizations have been carrying out the campaign setting the history straight as they try to push for the uncovering of the activities of the collaborators and the need to bring about a social change for the sake of the nation. They have been able to counter the actions of the collaborationists through petitions, advertisements, protests, campaigns, and academic reports. Another fight was initiated by the Press reform movement to push for the removal of the traces of collaborationists legacies. A dictionary is also to be compiled to remove the colonial legacy, to aid in the settlement of the issue by ensuring that no same mistakes are committed in future though assessment of past actions, and to help in building a just society.
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