“It is definitely not good politics to interfere too much with the individual’s life. ... That it is extremely unnatural and dangerous to drag people along by orders of a single individual or of a few is all too well proven by the misfortunes that befell Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.”
- Kim Koo (1876-1949), “My Wish” |
A “chinilpa” (collaborationist with Imperial Japan) he wasn’t. Neither was he especially fond of the monarchy which antedated Japan’s stealthy routing of Korea, having been judged to be a member of a less-favored “commoner” (sangmin) class.
Furthermore, he never became ppalgaengi (communist), pro-communist, “pro-North” (jongbuk) or fascist -- as some have snobbishly, dubiously and rather lazily claimed.
What Kim Koo most certainly was, beyond being a product of harsh circumstances and an impossibly tumultuous and convoluted period: an earnest patriot who thoroughly loved Korea and its people, a tireless advocate for his nation’s “full and complete independence,” and a work-in-progress (hence problematic to judge).
After the unscrupulous and catastrophic decision by two competing empires to divvy up the country -- scorning basic humanitarian principles and expert warnings explicitly indicating it would lead to unprecedented crises for Koreans, including war -- Kim promptly became a redoubtable voice espousing “unification now.” He labored until his death to avert the impending proxy war between the freshly-fractured, hastily-forming, mutually-antagonistic and ideologically-incompatible states, for which the stage was being set.
A former State Department official -- regarded as one of the only US “Korea experts” of the period – stressed for a 1950 report, “Since the 38-degree line was not only without any topographic basis, but also without any foundation in previous political and economic fact as well, the division amounted in reality to the vivisection of Korea.”
A heartrending plea for unity published a year before Kim Koo’s ruthless assassination at the Korean age of 74, dispels libelous myths surrounding a fabricated “true agenda” or malevolent character. Stereotypically ignoble distortions, heedlessly jumbled into a ghastly caricature, fed a narrative or theory by careerist historians dependent upon strikingly dubious sources (typically secondhand accounts from his “pro-Japanese” political enemies). Wildly inaccurate depictions have been spread -- replete with an air of historiographical authority -- as “history.” A brutish and not-quite-human contortion of Kim Koo’s person has been incautiously recycled through a string of books on Korea.
“Entreaty to My 30 Million Compatriots,” written in 1948, may be a helpful brisk-read for those who wish to understand the man and his actual disposition – such as his straightforward hunger for peace and unity within Korea and predilection for democratic principles, also evident in other writings such as his 1947 statement of political philosophy titled “My Wish.”
In the 1948 statement, Kim Koo advised reevaluating the term “liberation” as applied to Aug. 15, 1945, as the era of “freedom we had awaited instead divided our territory, ushering in the peril that the Korean Peninsula may be eternally separated into two countries.” He endorsed instituting an alternative conception which more precisely encapsulates the meaning of Aug. 15 for Korea.
Baekbeom (Kim Koo’s pen name, roughly meaning “common person”) pleaded for the ending of trivial conflicts amongst Koreans of every background and political propensity, exhorting, “Let’s stop internal fights completely! There is an adage: ‘A little impatience spoils great plans.’ We must proceed onward from past affairs and, with inner resolve, tolerate one another.”
For his instrumental role in promoting harmony within the Korean independence movement, Baekbeom is oft-commended and cited by Koreans, both left-leaning and right-leaning, and is consistently named among the most popular figures in Korean history. Consequently, his legacy is among the most misappropriated -- some in Korea have labeled him maximally “leftist,” some outside of Korea extreme “rightist,” while those who prize objectivity and have circumspectly examined the matter may be inclined to describe him, at least at the end, as a moderate or centrist. The Kim dynasty despots have also sought, most contemptibly, to capitalize on his atypical fame via a menagerie of infantile, wretched and elaborate fiction.
Baekbeom ardently implored for the total and unconditional halting of politically-motivated violence within the entreaty, urgently appealing to the conscience of his people. He pled, “For once, let’s strive to forget about what is past. Do not be suspicious of one another and do not slander. Rather, we must appeal to each other’s true patriotism! Assassinations and destructiveness ... would only, in the end, impede our country’s emancipation. Let’s cease quarreling furiously amongst ourselves and cooperate with one another by way of a generous and warm heart!”
Poignantly, Kim Koo went on to express admiration for Gandhi who, it is believed, was able to pardon his assassin even while dying. He confessed, “I recently learned from Mahatma Gandhi. He is said to have placed his hand upon his forehead at the instant of being shot by an assassin, remembering to practice the virtue of forgiveness. I’ve known comparable ordeals such as being sentenced to death, and have been shot. Yet I’m ashamed to admit, at that time I lacked the courage to forgive my enemies. I’m quite embarrassed by my former inability to forgive, even now.”
Then, what would Baekbeom counsel respecting Korea’s present situation?
For one, those who brush aside mass atrocities which have been and continue to be perpetrated against Korea’s most helpless and defenseless populations within the North -- political prisoners who are entirely innocent, including thousands of children systematically starved, brutalized and forced to do slave labor unremittingly – are committing a grave error with severe implications. Baekbeom would have never condoned such callousness.
In the entreaty, Kim Koo conveyed a tearful sense of foreboding and unadulterated compassion toward his compatriots north of the 38th Parallel, stating, “Before I die, I want to see those who are from the north able to freely return home. When suffering difficult days, it seems I can hear the wailing of ghosts in the vicinity of the 38th Parallel. While sitting alone in the tranquil night, the reproachful and unhappy faces of poverty-stricken and starving compatriots of south and north seem to appear before me.”
The citation at this article’s onset from My Wish establishes that Baekbeom would have been frankly aghast by the totalitarian prison North Korea has become; a genocidal system of sheer exploitation with pronounced similarities to fascist-era Japan, in terms of mechanisms and modes of oppression, as well as in the deification and compulsory religious worship of what is generally regarded anathema to communism -- hereditary dictatorship. Even a 1970 book issued by Pyongyang, preceding Kim Jong-il’s designation as his father’s successor, denounced hereditary succession as a “reactionary custom of exploitative systems of the old days.”
By 1972 that bit was deleted from the North’s “Political Dictionary.”
Baekbeom would likewise be repulsed by the Kim dynasty’s discriminatory ways, which would evoke hardships he faced as a young man graded sangmin. Yet clearly, the Kim despots are architects of oppression unfathomably more heartless.
Independent law firm Hogan Lovells determined the Kim dynasty’s murderous maltreatment, over decades, of many millions of Korea’s people cursed and condemned by the tyrants as comprising a “hostile class” not solely transgressed the legal threshold for crimes against humanity, but also genocide. The dynasty has been found to be committing atrocities of such gravity and on a scale the world has not witnessed since the Khmer Rouge or the Nazis, declared UN investigators not long ago.
By Robert Park
Robert Park is a founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, minister, musician and former prisoner of conscience. This article is the first in his three-part series on Baekbeom. -- Ed.
(This article is first in a three-part series.)
