Truth and reconciliation | Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s disappointing end

12-30-2010 17:40 Fact-finding on misdeeds should be ongoing Looking over 100 years in five years is a tall order. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will disband today after a five-year activity. It verified 86 percent of the 11,000 petitions, with 14 percent remaining unresolved and rejected. Seoul needs a private panel or research institute to look into the unresolved truths for true reconciliation. The launching of the commission itself initially gave a message to the international community that Korea cares for innocent victims. It brought to light many hidden scars of Korea’s turbulent modern history. It found many innocent civilian victims massacred during the Korean War (1950-1953) and brutal infringement of human rights under the authoritarian leaders in the 1950s-1980s, including the undue politicized conviction of innocent fishermen and dissidents as Communist spies and pro-North Korean sympathizers. It also shed light on unknown brutalities and oppression perpetrated under Japan’s colonial rule (1910-1945). Most of its rulings were correct although ideological bias sometimes overshadowed its credibility. Liberal members dominated the panel for the first four years, but this year conservatives outnumbered liberals. Sometimes the controversial truths must have been judged by votes, not facts. Looking into the past wrongdoing by the current yardstick is sometimes dangerous and misleading. Interest groups sometimes bullied the commission members to influence rulings. It is also undeniable that some ideologically-biased researchers hid or fabricated pieces of evidence to make predetermined conclusions. They bypassed proper procedures for a biased conclusion. Some petitions smack of political intentions. For example, the commission had to squander budget and time to look into a petition that a North Korean agent’s killing of former first lady Yook Young-soo in 1974 was a fabrication. Another petition claimed that the government concocted North Korea’s bombing of Korean Air in 1987. The panel was unable to bring to light the killing of civilians by the U.S. troops and bombers. It categorized the U.S. killing as the inevitable byproduct of the military action during the chaotic Korean War. The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration had also pursued a reductive policy on the commission. It decided against extending the activity of the commission and establishing a research foundation to continue the project. The commission could not meet 100 percent expectation of the people. However, it showed limits in satisfying the commonsensical expectation. It must make public unpublished facts it collected but kept confidential for national security. Some of the unresolved mysteries will be verified only when the South gets documents hidden in the North. The commission’s activities will also be the subject of evaluation by historians. Some of their judgments may be subject to change. It may take more than 100 years to review all historical distortions. The victims should get compensation with their honors restored. The findings should be a lesson for future leaders. The fact-finding mission of past wrongdoing must be an ongoing process. Creditability on new historical findings will get boost when researchers stay above ideological bias. People should see history with more precision than passion or ideology. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2010/12/137_78905.html [Editorial] Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s disappointing end The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea (TRCK), which was founded with the goal of establishing ethnic legitimacy and achieving citizen unity through determining the truth of Korean history, concluded its operations yesterday with a report summarizing five years of activity. Established in December 2005 according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act, this commission has delved into the truth of incidents related to the anti-Japan independence movement, civilian massacres around the time of the Korean War, and illegal human rights infringements by public authorities. In the short space of five years, the commission achieved substantial results. To begin with, it brought to light the truth for 8,468 cases, some 80 percent of the 10,860 petitions it received. It located socialist-affiliated independence activists who had been buried, and it confirmed that civilians were illegally executed by the military and police at locations throughout the country around the time of the Korean War. Also brought to light were the manufacturing of charges by state authorities, such as the case with the Minjok Ilbo's Cho Yong-su, as well as advertising suppression in the Dong-A Ilbo and forced dismissals of journalists by the Chun Doo-hwan government. The commission also showed that a series of espionage cases in the 1980s, including the “Aram-hoe incident,” were distorted or concocted entirely through illegal incarceration and acts of brutality. These efforts were successful in extracting a state apology in 2008 from then President Roh Moo-hyun, who apologized for the Ulsan Bodo League incident in which some 870 civilians were massacred by the military and police. The commission’s efforts also led to the restoration of justice through retrials by the judiciary. Still, one would find it difficult to say that the commission succeeded, as originally hoped, in achieving reconciliation by bringing the truth to light. Presently, ten groups, including the National Association of Family Members of Korean War Civilian Massacre Victims, are decrying the final report, saying that its inadequate content granted an indulgence to massacre perpetrators. In academia as well, some critics have contended that the report diluted the deliberate brutality of state authorities by presenting executions by the military and police and by members of the left wing side-by-side, and that by focusing on U.S. accounts regarding civilian massacres by U.S. forces, it played up the perceived inevitability of those deaths. A large part of the blame for this outcome falls on the Lee administration, which has been opposed to addressing these historical issues. The chairman appointed by this administration led the way in diluting his own commission’s powers, for example by making statements that flew in the face of previous commission decisions. And the military and police, which in many instances were the perpetrators, took advantage of this atmosphere to put off implementing the commission’s recommendations, even going so far to make moves to overturn the decisions. As a result, true reconciliation and reckoning with the past ended up being put off until another day. The commission ends on a note of disappointment. Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr] Posted on : Dec.30,2010 15:56 KST  Modified on : Dec.30,2010 16:07 KST © 2006 The Hankyoreh Media Company. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, mimeographical, in recorded form or otherwise for commercial use, without the permission of the Hankyoreh Media Company. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/456468.html