Yi Tae-jin
Professor Emeritus of History, Seoul National University
More than a century and half have passed since Western powers knocked on the doors of China, Japan, and Korea. “Turbulent” would be an understatement to describe this period. Large-scale wars such as the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the Korean War followed one another. The emergence of communism in the 1920s also gave rise to fierce and often bloody struggles between the right and the left. Communism disappeared where it had first originated, but here in East Asia, it remains intact as a political system. The most significant shift in this period must be the process of industrialization, through which East Asia, by adopting the technological civilization of the West, has metamorphosed from agrarian society into one based on commerce and industry. One should note the starkly different paths taken by these three nations toward such a transformation.
Since the Meiji era, Japan wrote its history under the framework of nationalism and militarism. China and Korea, on the other hand, wrote their respective history amidst clashes between liberalism and communism. These differing experiences have determined their current state of affairs in terms of polity and territory. China and Korea, each as divided nations, have unfinished tasks of achieving unity across the Taiwan Strait and the DMZ, respectively. Japan, for its part, is seen intensifying its chauvinistic tendencies under the rubric of “emperor-centered nationalism.” Their situations, thus portrayed, are ones not entirely worthy of congratulations. North Korea still stagnates as an agrarian economy, mainland China remains committed to a communist one-party system while embracing a capitalist economy, and Japan manifests its intention to revive its “glory” during its imperial era while priding itself on being a capitalist economy par excellence. This snapshot exhibits a less than satisfactory state of affairs in the region. Nor is South Korea (ROK) faring better. Despite its ascent to the higher echelons of the capitalist world economy, the ROK is draining its hard-earned resources amid anachronistic disputes over left-right ideologies.
The present has its roots in the past. Today’s challenges can thus be best understood and tackled when viewed through the lens of history. Let us begin with the history of wars that permeated the better part of the past century and a half. Among the wars mentioned above, all but one were launched by Japan. It is no exaggeration to say that Japan dominated the geopolitics of the region in the modern era. To be remembered as the instigator of all this is Yoshida Shōin (吉田松陰; 1830~1859). Yoshida was executed at the age of 29 for inciting a revolt against the Tokugawa Shogunate. Before his death, he groomed the members of the so-called Chōshū clique (長州藩閥), such as Itō Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo, who later spearheaded the Meiji Restoration. The Record From Prison (Yūshūroku幽囚錄), written by Yoshida while in jail, became a textbook for his students, who turned Japan into a country of military aggression and conquest. Abe Shinzō, incumbent Prime Minister of Japan, attracted media attention when he, as a newly appointed prime minister, visited, instead of the Yasukuni Shrine, the grave of Yoshida located in Hagi (萩) in 13 August, 2013 to pay homage to him. Abe is a consummate admirer of Yoshida.
To summarize, the Record From Prison argues as follows. In the age of sailing ships, the seas surrounding the insular land of Japan served as fortifications to safeguard the country. In the age of steamships, however, the same condition renders the country more vulnerable to foreign aggression. In order for Japan to survive under this situation, it must quickly absorb the advanced technology of the West and then occupy neighboring countries before the Western powers do. In his book, Yoshida suggested the targets of such occupation in this order: Hokkaido, Ryuku Islands, Taiwan, Joseon (Korea), Manchuria, Mongolia, and China. With an occupied China as the springboard, Japan could then expand into Australia and the Pacific toward California. What is even more surprising is that his disciples followed their master’s plan almost to the letter. Within years of their assumption of power, they seized Hokkaido and Ryuku Islands. In the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War, they obtained Taiwan. Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War enabled its forcible annexation of Korea and paved the way for later expansion into Manchuria and Mongolia. In the Shōwa era, Japan staged the Mukden Incident to invade Manchuria and then launched the Second Sino-Japanese War to conquer China, after which it attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, thereby provoking the Pacific War. On the other hand, before its forcible annexation by Japan after the Russo-Japanese War, the Korean Empire had pursued the policy of gaining international recognition as a neutral state on the strength of its self-driven modernization efforts. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, which succeeded to the Korean Empire, persevered in fighting against the Japanese rule.
The aggressive territorial expansion of the imperial Japan was severely condemned by the international community. In 1932, the League of Nations, the first ever international organization instituted in 1920 to preserve peaceful coexistence of nations, denounced the illegality of the Mukden Incident. Meanwhile, the League conducted the codification of international law from 1927 to 1935, thereby promoting the status of international law, which had been regarded as pertaining only to academia, into the sphere of public law. In its 1935 Draft Convention on the Law of Treaties, the League cited the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905, also known as Eulsa Unwilling Treaty (Eulsa neugyak 乙巳勒約), as one of the three illegal treaties in history that the League found to have been without any legal effect from the beginning. This conclusion was inherited by the United Nations when the U.N. superseded the League in 1946. In 1963, the U.N. International Law Commission added Nazi Germany’s coerced treaty with Czechoslovakia for its partition to the list of the three illegal treaties mentioned above in its report (item 69 of its 15th session) to the General Assembly, which adopted a resolution on the report (Resolution 1902 of its 18th session) the same year. This means that in the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between the Republic of Korea and Japan (Hanil gibon joyak 韓日基本條約), the coerced “protectorate” treaty of 1905 should have been declared “void ab initio” and therefore the subsequent annexation of Korea by Japan ipso facto “illegal.” However, the Korean government was unaware of this perhaps because the ROK was not a member state of the U.N. at the time. And Japan, despite being a member state, turned a blind eye to this. As a result, the matter regarding this U.N. resolution was not addressed in the 1965 treaty. Japan’s intentional disregard of the relevant U.N. resolution cannot be said to be unrelated to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.
In the aftermath of the Pacific War, the United States was poised to impose severe punishment on Japanese fascists. But the communist takeover of mainland China shifted the U.S. policy toward that of leniency, with a view to turning Japan into a bulwark against communist expansion. The San Francisco Peace Conference reflected this reversal. Originally, the United States intended to include the ROK as a party to the peace treaty by acknowledging that the Korean Provisional Government’s military operations, jointly conducted with the Kuomintang forces of China, against the Japanese empire entitled the ROK to participate in the treaty as one of the combatant countries on the side of the Allies. This is shown in the first draft circulated by U.S. State Secretary Dulles in March 1951. This idea was opposed by the British government, however, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru did not miss this opening to vehemently oppose the participation of the ROK in the treaty. It is a misunderstanding that it was the U.S. government that opposed the Korean participation. The exclusion of the ROK from the peace treaty allowed Japan to avoid bearing responsibility for its illegal annexation of Korea. Formerly, Britain and Japan had been representative of the imperial powers of the West and the East, respectively. If their action in the peace conference resulted in the ongoing phenomenon of Japan’s untoward longing for its past glory, such an action would best be reevaluated and corrected in order to rectify the current situation.
The coexistence of capitalist economy and communist party system being implemented in China should be confined to a limited time frame. A more and more powerful Chinese capitalist economy that ends up strengthening its communist party system would only rouse Japan’s chauvinistic tendencies even further. The same logic also applies to the case of North Korea. The most suitable course of action for Korea, arguably the greatest victim of Japanese military aggression, would be striving to serve as a role model in pursuing international justice in East Asia, rather than pretending to be a great power. At the turn of the 20th century, Ahn Junggeun stated that Korea is too softhearted and fainthearted (inyak 仁弱) to invade others and that Japan is a militaristic country without principles (mudo 無道) that inevitably will be crushed. Considering the history of the region over the past century and a half, the ROK seems to be the one best positioned to pursue international justice. If the ROK disregards this role, maintaining peace in East Asia will become that much more difficult. If the ROK endeavors to build up its national strength and truly pursue international justice, how magnificent would that be? Now is time to recognize the beauty of maintaining principles.
*Translated by Hacksun Cha (Korean Institute for Historical Research)