SEOUL — Once I was a boy rising up in South Korea within the early Nineteen Nineties, my mom gave me a 60-volume set of biographies. Half of them profiled eminent world figures — the Buddha, Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie — the remaining have been Koreans, a lot of whom have been famend for one factor: resisting Japan.
I requested why there weren’t extra Koreans price remembering, maybe for different causes. “That’s what our historical past is about, I assume,” she replied. “Preventing Japan.”
For many years Koreans have been unable to maneuver on from Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula — its rapacious rule, the conscription of laborers and “consolation girls” intercourse slaves. It’s been like a type of nationwide brainwashing.
It’s time for South Koreans to let go of those unhealthy feelings. We share an excessive amount of in frequent with Japan. We’re each fashionable democracies, financial success tales and fellow U.S. allies. And there’s a larger risk looming over each of us: China.
In class we lionized individuals like Yi Solar-shin, a Korean admiral who helped repel a Japanese invasion greater than 4 centuries in the past, as if it occurred yesterday. Japanese depredations have been blamed for stifling nationwide improvement. It didn’t assist that Tokyo confirmed a scarcity of regret with its historical past of utilizing college textbooks that have been seen in Korea as glossing over its wartime brutality and with visits by Japanese politicians to the Tokyo shrine the place convicted conflict criminals are honored.
As in lots of post-colonial international locations, our emotions have been usually conflicted. Within the early Nineteen Nineties, a South Korean ebook whose title could possibly be roughly translated as “Japan’s Received Nothing” was revealed. A litany of Japan’s supposed nationwide flaws, it was a finest vendor. Shortly after, one other finest vendor got here out: “Japan’s Received One thing,” which took a extra beneficiant view.
President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, a conservative, realizes the necessity for a change. With one eye on China (and North Korea), he has been busy making good with Japan. Final month his administration proposed a compromise decision to a decades-old dispute over compensation for conscripted Korean laborers throughout World Struggle II. (Slightly than insisting that Japanese firms that used the laborers pay the compensation, a South Korean government-run fund would do it.)
Mr. Yoon rapidly adopted up with a state go to to Japan — the primary between the 2 international locations in 12 years — the place he tossed again a beer with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
My first journey overseas was to Japan in 1992. It appeared like everybody I knew wished me to deliver coveted Japanese items again for them — Sony Walkmans and Toshiba rice cookers. However we have been cautious about talking positively of Japan. South Korea’s political class has lengthy thrived on anti-Japanese rhetoric, and any trace of admiration for Japan may have you ever labeled a traitor (I’m bracing for that as I write this).
In a cathartic launch of resentment, the South Korean authorities in 1995 started demolishing Japan’s grand former colonial headquarters — an important architectural loss — that had dominated central Seoul. After the Japanese left, it grew to become a authorities constructing and later a museum. I wandered by way of it as a toddler, enthralled by the wondrous reveals of Korean historical past and artwork, and I couldn’t fairly perceive why it needed to be leveled. However such vestiges of the colonial period needed to be “eradicated,” we have been advised, as in the event that they have been cockroaches. Even now, the location of Japan’s embassy in Seoul has an under-siege air to it, with protests recurrently held on the road out entrance as a statue of a younger lady, representing “consolation girls” victims, stares on the embassy.
Nonetheless, worry of China, the highly effective neighbor on our reverse facet, helps to interrupt the anti-Japan spell.
China has exerted super affect on Korea for greater than 2,000 years and for hundreds of years was seen by Korean intellectuals because the supply of all that was civilized. We avidly embraced Chinese language literary, cultural and philosophical traditions and used China’s writing system for a lot of our historical past. I used to be one of many admirers. My mom enrolled me as a toddler in personal classes on studying classical Chinese language, which was thought of the peak of sophistication. The class of the texts moved me deeply.
Regardless of South Korean antipathy towards Communism and China’s entry into the Korean Struggle on the facet of North Korea, many people regarded to China with hope that it may use its affect to advertise a peaceable reunification of North and South.
However North Korea is as belligerent as ever, and China is now seen within the South as a part of the issue, propping up its Communist neighbor whereas doing little to forestall its acquisition of missile and nuclear expertise. In 2016, within the title of countering the North Korean risk, South Korea agreed to let the US deploy a missile-defense system on its soil. China reacted with rage, its government-run media calling for boycotts of South Korean merchandise.
My fascination with China led me to bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in Chinese language research. However my emotions started to bitter when a few of my Mandarin academics, who have been from China, insisted that Taiwan, a profitable, progressive democracy, was a rogue province that have to be introduced underneath China’s management. 4 years in the past, I participated in a panel dialogue on Chinese language state tv and was requested how East Asian international locations may cooperate higher. Once I began to say that vastly completely different political methods remained a stumbling block, the Chinese language host minimize me off, apparently attempting to cease me from criticizing Chinese language authoritarianism.
South Koreans now have a few of the world’s most adverse views of China, in response to surveys, citing the emergence of the coronavirus from Wuhan, repression by the Chinese language Communist Celebration and air air pollution that wafts eastward over our nation. The gradual phasing out of Chinese language characters for the reason that Seventies in favor of a local Korean alphabet has made Chinese language tradition really feel outdated. Many South Koreans worry that Beijing’s said intention to “unify” with self-ruled Taiwan — militarily, if obligatory — may drag us right into a devastating regional battle.
Nonetheless, Mr. Yoon has been vilified by his political opponents, who, reverting to the identical outdated playbook, denounce his outreach to Japan as “humiliating.” His already low approval scores have dipped additional.
However many South Koreans appear prepared to maneuver on. Even past their shared nervousness about China, South Korea and Japan are certain by their mutual fascination with one another’s tradition and leisure, corresponding to Okay-pop, Okay-drama and Pokémon. Japan is wildly widespread with Korean vacationers, extra Koreans are constructive towards Japan than adverse, and most South Koreans favor higher relations with Tokyo.
Swapping one boogeyman for an additional is probably not wholesome for the Korean nationwide psyche, however maybe that’s the destiny of a rustic like ours, sandwiched between highly effective neighbors. And for as soon as, a minimum of, I can agree with my politically conservative dad and mom, who’ve come to share my mistrust of China and affection for Japan.
I took my mom to Japan final month to see the cherry blossoms in bloom. Publish-pandemic journey between the 2 international locations has surged, and Korean vacationers have been in all places. As we strolled alongside the Sumida River in Tokyo, its banks ablaze with the mushy pink of cherry blossoms, she let loose a contented sigh, turned to me and stated, “This nation is so stunning and civilized.”
