Tuesday, March 21, 2023

What We Need to Remember and To Forget

 인용하다, 역사, 친구들, 추억, 기억하다, 감정, 포도 수확, 콜라주

In the Eyes of the Believer Column of the Catholic Times a director of a Theological Institute gives the readers some thoughts on the truth and mercy connection that  society has to deal with not infrequently.

A second-generation Korean director active in Japan, was selected as the winner of a Peace Prize this year. The  director has been making documentary videos for 40 years together with the history academia and civic groups to teach the truth about the massacre of Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake in Japan. The date was September 1, 1923, at the time considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike quake-prone Japan. 
 
Before and after the awards ceremony, several Catholic groups joined together to watch documentary films  made and listen to lectures related to the earthquake under the supervision of Pax Christi Korea.

It was a 7.9-magnitude earthquake similar to the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a while ago. It left devastating damage. However, in the chaos of this disaster, rumors that  “Koreans poisoned wells” and “Koreans are setting fires and killing Japanese” spread and emergency martial law was declared, and vigilante groups organized by the military, police, and civilians started indiscriminately killing Koreans. About 6,600 Koreans were massacred during the Great Kanto Earthquake.

One documentary begins with a scene to excavate remains in a riverbed. This is the place where Koreans were slaughtered and buried during the earthquake. A Japanese civic group trying to find out the truth was allowed a limited period of three days to dig, but no remains were found. However,, a survivor  shows the scars left on his body and vividly testifies to the memories of that time, and Japanese residents also share their eyewitness accounts, recalling memories of the time, including diaries they wrote as children. The film restores the memories of the Kanto Massacre buried underground for 60 years, showing various historical materials and interviews with Japanese eyewitnesses intermittently showing the truth of the testimonies.
 
At the end of the film, a Korea witness is talking with a Japanese witness of the event, standing side by side the Japanese citizen is weeping and hopes that his grandchildren will not forget the truth of what happened. Perhaps the words we want to hear the most about the past history of the Japanese colonial era, the true reconciliation between Korea and Japan, is such a scene. 
  
On March 1st, the President read a commemorative speech to cooperate with Japan instead of mentioning the past, and a few days later, the government announced that the Korean companies should pay compensation to victims of forced labor. The government explains that we should stop demanding an apology from the Japanese government for past history, and focus on building a future-oriented Korea-Japan relationship that cooperates for security and economy. At first glance, the words to move toward the future rather than the past seem hopeful, but the writer is  concerned that the perpetrators are given an excuse to hide or distort the truth of history.

In 1973, conscientious citizens of Japan took the lead in erecting a memorial to Korean victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake. They held a memorial service for the Korean victims  on September 1 every year, and successive Tokyo governors have also sent polite eulogies to express their condolences. However, since 2017, the provincial governor has refused to send a eulogy, and provincial council members are pushing for the removal of memorial stones, and far-right citizens have disrupted the memorial service and continued anti-Korean protests, saying that the massacre of Koreans was a false accusation. 

It is not only yesterday that anti-Korean rumors similar to the Great Kanto Earthquake spread whenever disasters occur and many Japanese actually believe them. As the saying goes, history that is not remembered will repeat itself, so the path to true reconciliation will not be oblivion of the past.

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