[Interview] Donald Baker, Gwangju Democratization Movement Witness & Korean History Professor of UBC
Interviewed by Kim Sung-Soo, OhMyNews!
- In November 2010, Lee Young-Jo, 3rd president of Truth and Reconciliation Commission of ROK, described Gwangju Massacre or Gwangju Democratization Movement as ‘Gwangju Rebellion’ and Jeju April 3 Incident as ‘Jeju Revolt’. What do you think of Lee Young-Jo’s definition on Gwangju Incident and Jeju April 3 Incident?
I am not comfortable with either of those two definitions. The rebellion in May, 1980, was a rebellion by a few Army generals, not by the people in Gwangju. on May 18 a few people in Gwangju protested peacefully against the declaration of nation-wide martial law (peaceful protest is not a rebellion) but then, when those peaceful protests were met with deadly violence at the hands of the military, they began fighting back, primarily in self-defense. Therefore the label “rebellion” is inappropriate.
As for Jeju, it would be more appropriately described as a civil war, since it began as an armed protest against plans to hold separate national elections south of the DMZ and therefore solidify the division of the peninsula into two separate countries. In other words, the fighting in Jeju back then was fighting over two different visions of what Korea should look like, over whether it should be one country or two. That’s a civil war, not a revolt. (In US history, the fight between the north and the south is usually called a civil war, not a revolt by southerners against northerners. I believe the same sort of terminology should be applied to Korean history as well.)
- 1971 you went to Gwangju to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer and stayed in Gwangju for three years, learning to speak the local dialect and falling in love with Korean culture. In particular, with what aspects of Korean culture you fell in love and why?
I think what most attracted me to Korean culture was the fact that it is much older than the North American culture I grew up in and therefore has many layers that are fun to explore. North American culture can appear very shallow by comparison. The Kwangju area was particularly fascinating for me because at that time much of the traditional culture was still very much alive there.
I also was impressed by how distinctive Korean culture is. I had already studied Chinese and Japanese history and culture and naively expected Korea to be very similar to either China or Japan. Instead, I found a culture that was quite different from what I had seen in China and Japan and, in many ways, was actually more attractive (particularly the emotional openness of the Korean people, which allowed me to make friends in Korea quiet easily.)
- You were in Gwangju in May 1980. Could you tell me what you have seen and encountered in Gwangju at that time, in relations to the massacre?
I saw violence in Seoul before I went to Gwangju in May, 1980. I was standing in what we called then the Namdaemun rotary and watched a city bus with no passengers on it drive around the rotary and hit some riot policemen (전투경찰) who had their backs to the rotary as they tried to push student demonstrators up the hill toward Namsan (in front of the Tokyu Hotel)/ I saw at least 6 people fall down after their hit. They looked dead, especially when a police truck drove up and those six bodies were through in the back of that truck and driven away. However, the next day the newspapers reported that only one person had died in that incident. It also reported that the person who had commandeered that bus was from Gwangju.
When the Gwangju massacre started, I was still in Seoul. I had a short wave radio, so I was able to find out what was going on down there, but I wanted to see for myself and check on my friends there. I left Seoul for Kwangju on May 27, but couldn’t get there right away, since the army had blocked all the roads into Kwangju. Instead, I went to Haenam and then, the next day, took a local bus which dropped me off outside of Gwangju. I then walked over a not-very-high mountain into the city, reaching there May 28, after the public killings had stopped.
I saw plenty of blood on the streets, and I saw people (usually parents) weeping over the coffins containing their loved one’s bodies. (One particularly tragic scene was a mother chasing the cart that was carrying away her son’s body, crying out “don’t leave me,son.” ) I also saw a long line of grandmothers waiting to go inside the martial arts gym near the Provincial Capital Building to identify the bodies inside. And I talked to many friends, people I had gotten to know between 1971 and 1974, about what had gone on between May 18 and May 27. I was shocked. I stayed in Gwangju only a couple of days and then went back up to Seoul (I had to walk over a hill again to get a local bus outside of Gwangju, since the army was still blocking the regular roads).
There are plenty of painful memories of watching the people of Gwangju in shock and mourning. Among those memories is one that is particularly relevant to me as an historian. While I was in Gwangju, I went to a public bathhouse to take a bath. The lady who sold me the ticket to that bathhouse asked me why I was in Korea. When I replied that I was an historian, she told me I should go home, because “Gwangju had no more history now, since it has been destroyed as a city.”
- In 1983, you got a PhD in Korean History from the University of Washington. Is there any relations between you became Koreanist and the Gwangju Massacre?
I was already doing research for my Korean history Ph.D. dissertation in 1980, so the Gwangju massacre didn’t change that. However, the fact that I decided to study Korean history was a result of the three years I had spent in Gwangju earlier (1971-74), when I discovered that Korea had a fascinating history but that few Westerners knew much about it. Gwangju inspired me to want to teach people in North America about Korea’s history and its culture.
- You wrote PhD thesis on Confucian confrontation with Catholicism in eighteenth-century Korea, with special attention paid to the famous Confucian scholar and Catholic apostate Dasan Jeong Yagyong. What is your evaluation on Dasan and what is conclusion or key point of your thesis?
I first became interested in Dasan because of his tragic life. He was clearly a brilliant man who could have contributed a lot in Korea but instead was pushed out of government and forced into 18 years in exile because of his youthful involvement with “Western Learning.” The more I read of his writings, however, his ideas began to interest me more than his biography. I found him to be an original thinker who was determined to do two things: became a more virtuous person and promote a more just society. I discovered that he remained within the broad boundaries on Confucianism, but just barely. He was a practical thinker who was open to ideas and techniques outside of Confucianism if they could help him achieve his two goals (which are traditional Confucian goals). I have been particularly impressed by his ethical writings, found primarily in his commentaries on the Confucian Classics. He wrestled his entire life with the issue of human moral weakness, of how difficult it was for him and other human beings to live up to the demands of Confucianism to always act out of concern from the common good rather than for personal benefit.
As a result of his recognition of human moral frailty, he broke away from the usual Confucian stress on determination (志) and focused instead on free will (自主之權), on the ability of human beings to decide whether to act properly or not. This led him to a belief in a personal deity,not in the sense of a creator of the universe but in the sense of a supreme personality above who watched our every thought and action. He argued that belief in such a God would inspire us to always make the right choices.
- In November 2010, Lee Young-Jo, 3rd president of Truth and Reconciliation Commission of ROK, described Gwangju Massacre or Gwangju Democratization Movement as ‘Gwangju Rebellion’ and Jeju April 3 Incident as ‘Jeju Revolt’. What do you think of Lee Young-Jo’s definition on Gwangju Incident and Jeju April 3 Incident?
I am not comfortable with either of those two definitions. The rebellion in May, 1980, was a rebellion by a few Army generals, not by the people in Gwangju. on May 18 a few people in Gwangju protested peacefully against the declaration of nation-wide martial law (peaceful protest is not a rebellion) but then, when those peaceful protests were met with deadly violence at the hands of the military, they began fighting back, primarily in self-defense. Therefore the label “rebellion” is inappropriate.
As for Jeju, it would be more appropriately described as a civil war, since it began as an armed protest against plans to hold separate national elections south of the DMZ and therefore solidify the division of the peninsula into two separate countries. In other words, the fighting in Jeju back then was fighting over two different visions of what Korea should look like, over whether it should be one country or two. That’s a civil war, not a revolt. (In US history, the fight between the north and the south is usually called a civil war, not a revolt by southerners against northerners. I believe the same sort of terminology should be applied to Korean history as well.)
- When you teach at UBC on Gwangju Democratization Movement, what were the responses and feedback from the students?
My non-Korean students usually know nothing about the Gwangju Massacre and are shocked when I lecture about it, since all they know is Korea today and therefore tend to think that it has always been democratic. . When I began talking about how I got into Gwangju in May, 1980, and what I saw there, the entire classroom becomes quiet and they hang on my every word.
Most of my Korean students are almost as ignorant. They may have heard something about “May 18″ but they have no idea how bad it was. However, sometimes I have students whose families came from Gwangju. Such students have two different reactions. one group at first doesn’t believe me, but then they go home and talk to their parents and find out that is why their parents immigrated to Canada. The other group will sometimes come up to me after class to thank me for talking about something their families had told them about but they were uncomfortable sharing with the fellow students in Canada.
- You met the late former president Kim Dae-Jung in 1983, while he was in-exile in the USA. How was the meeting with Kim Dae-Jung, any interesting or unforgettable episodes?
When I met Kim Dae-jung, he was in exile in the US. At my invitation ( I was the head of the local chapter of Amnesty International and we had worked on his behalf when he was on death row), he and his wife came to Seattle and spent two days at the University of Washington, giving public lectures and meeting with members of the local Korean community. I was very impressed with him. I think what impressed me the most was when he told me and the other members of the Amnesty International group two things:
First of all, he said that when he became president, he would try to abolish the death penalty. (Even though he wasn’t able to do that, I have noticed that no one was executed when he was president).
Second, he told us that, when he became president, the first thing he would do was pardon those who had tried to kill him. He said such a step was necessary to help Korea overcome the regional rivalry that was then tearing the country apart. When he was finally elected president and actually pardoned both Chun Do Hwan and No Tae-woo, he remembered what he had told me 15 years earlier and was amazed that he has kept his word.
- You taught Korean, Japanese, and Chinese history at various universities. In your opinion, what are the main characteristics of these three countries?
That’s hard to say. Traditional Japan is obviously a lot different from traditional China or traditional Korea, since it was ruled by warriors for centuries and did not have the sort of peaceful and well-educated Confucian bureaucracy we see in traditional Korea. Moreover, traditional Japan has a much stronger merchant class than Korea did. Edo (Tokyo) and Osaka both had vibrant merchant quarters, which we don’t see in traditional Korea or even in traditional China (despite the large number of wealthy merchants in traditional China).
Traditional Korea also differed from traditional China in three significant aspects: First of all, it was much more concerned about hereditary status than China was. Starting with the Tang dynasty, China had much more social mobility than Korea did. Second, Korea respected women a lot more than traditional China did. Elite Chinese men bound their women’s feet (crippling them) from the 11th century through to the end of the 19th. Koreans never did that, nor did Koreans expect women to give up their family name to adopt their husband’s surname. Finally, over the last thousand years of traditional China, China had to endure direct rule by non-Chinese conquerers, such as the Mongols and the Manchu. Even though the Mongols and the Manchu both defeated Korea, Korea was able to keep its own royal family on the throne, giving Korea greater continuity than China had. (I might add that both the Goryeo dynasty and the Joseon dynasty lasted longer than any dynasty in China over the last two thousand years.
In the 20th century, however, South Korea has come to resemble Japan more than it resembles China, particularly in the second half of the 20th century. Like Japan after 1945, Korea has a democratic government and a powerful commercial and industrial economy. Also, like Japan did with its culture, Korea has created a modern Korean culture that both allows Koreans today be proudly both Koran and modern and also attracts the attention of many non-Koreans. North Korea, on the other hand, resembles China much more than it resembles Korea or Japan. Politically, North Korea is a dictatorship, though, unlike China, in North Korea it is an hereditary dictatorship, a sign of the lingering influence of the Joseon dynasty! Economically, North Korea resembles China in the 1960s more than it resembles Japan, South Korea, or even China today.
- Although Chun Doo-Hwan was perpetrator of the Gwangju Massacre, he is still well off financially and his body guards’ salaries paid by taxpayers’ money, what do you think of that as a Koreanist, and what should be done about this?
Even though I recognize why President Kim Dae-jung pardoned Chun Doo-hwan, I think he should should be treated more like the criminal he was than like an ex-president. After all, the people of Korea didn’t elect him president. He made himself president through military force. I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I believe Chun Doo-hwan should have been imprisoned for life. At the very least, his personal fortune should be taken from him and given instead to those in Gwangju who were victims of his resort to military force to seize power.
- As a Koreanist, do you have any advice or suggestion to Korean government?
My advice would be to make sure the younger generation understands how far South Korea has come over the last 50 years. In my experience, I don’t think the younger generation understands how hard their parents and grandparents had to work to make South Korea a prosperous and democratic country. If they can appreciate the sacrifices their predecessors made, then they will be less likely to let Korea slip back into a more authoritarian approach to politics. (Korea has come much farther in a much shorter period of time than almost any other country that went from underdeveloped to developed status over the last half of the 20th century. Even the amount of blood that was shed, that it was still unacceptable, is much less than we see in countries like Indonesia or India). The only country I can think of with a history comparable to Korea’s is Taiwan.
The younger generation of Koreans need to know how unique Korea’s modern history is so that they can be proud of what their parents and grandparents achieved.