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proconcordialabor · 7 years

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Address by President Moon Jae-in on the 99th March First Independence Movement Day March 01, 2018

My fellow Koreans, overseas compatriots,

Today marks the 99th anniversary of the March First Independence Movement. It is still in our hearts at this moment as a vivid and living memory. Each and every brick of Seodaemun Prison is etched with noble stories of defiance in the face of hardship and death. I feel like I can hear the chants for Korea’s independence now.

Today, we are gathered here to commemorate the living, breathing spirit of this significant day in a historic place of the independence movement; we are not holding just a perfunctory ceremony.

During Japanese colonial rule, approximately 2,600 people were imprisoned in the Seodaemun Prison each year. Up until August 15, 1945, when the country was liberated, nearly 100,000 Koreans had been incarcerated here. Nine out of ten of them were independence activists and so-called “thought offenders.”

From those in their teens to the elderly, from Jeju Island in the south to Hamgyeong Province in the north, they acted for the cause of their country’s independence. Sometimes, a mother and her son, a father and his daughter, and brothers and sisters were put behind bars together.

Countless mothers and wives stayed in the alleys in front of this Prison and looked after their imprisoned children and husbands by working to provide sustenance, and sewing clothes for them. Not only the inmates themselves but also their family members were all independence activists.

Fellow Koreans,

Ninety nine years ago today, hand-written statements were put up in villages and markets. Copies of the Declaration of Korean Independence were passed from hand to hand. When the Declaration was simultaneously read aloud in all corners of the country, including Seoul, Pyongyang, Jinnampo, Anju, Uiju, Jeongju, Seoncheon and Wonsan, public protests calling for independence started. The independence movement instantly spread to local cities and even small towns and villages. The chants for independence also reverberated in the air in faraway lands, from Jiandao in China and the maritime province in Russia to Philadelphia and Hawaii in the United States.

From March 1 until the end of May that year, as many as 1,542 pro-independence protests took place within the country alone. More than two million people, about one tenth of the then population, took part in them.

Since that time, the experience and memory of the March First Independence Movement became a spiritual foundation for fierce struggle for independence against Imperialist Japan throughout the Japanese colonial period.

After the March First Independence Movement, hundreds of thousands of independence fighters crossed the Amnok River and Duman River every day. They formed the Korean National Association, the Northern Military Administration Office Army, the Greater Korea Independence Army, the Commanding Headquarters of Military Affairs, the Western Military Administration Office Army, the Greater Korea Independence Corps and the Korean Liberation Corps. They engaged in bloody combat with the Japanese military and police. If one fell down, 10 others rose up.

Following in the footsteps of patriotic martyr Ahn Jung-geun, an incalculable number of other patriotic martyrs continued their heroic struggles, including Kang Woo-gyu, Park Jae-hyeok, Choi Su-bong, Kim Ik-sang, Kim Sang-ok, Nah Seok-ju and Lee Bong-chang. Yun Bong-gil’s patriotic deed in Shanghai on April 29, 1932 was the consummation of such struggles.

In 1937 alone, as many as 3,600 large- and small-scale armed independence activities occurred within the country. In 1940, the Korean Provisional Government founded the Korean Liberation Army, the first regular military forces of the Republic of Korea. All of them are the founding fathers of the Republic of Korea.

Yu Gwan-sun, one of Korea’s patriotic martyrs, led a pro-independence protest in Aunae marketplace in Cheonan and lost her life at 18 in a solitary underground cell due to torture and malnutrition. Another patriotic martyr Dong Pung-shin participated in an independence protest in Myeongcheon, Hamgyeongbuk-do Province and passed away here in Seodaemun Prison at the very young age of 17.

We had other founding mothers who devoted themselves to the establishment of the Republic of Korea with the spirit of the March First Independence Movement; students at Ilshin Girls` School in Busan, who stayed up all through the night to draw the Taegeukgi, the national flag of Korea; patriotic martyr Yoon Hee-soon, the first female head of a volunteer righteous army; upright mother Kwak Nack-won of Korean independence leader Kim Gu; anti-Japan activist Nam Ja-hyeon, the mother of independence fighters, who crossed the Amnok River on March 9 right after the March First Independence Movement at the age of 46 to join the Western Military Administration Office Army; patriotic martyr Park Cha-jeong, who led the female students’ pro-independence protest by the Korean Women’s League and sought asylum in China to engage in the activities of the Heroic Corps; independence activist Jeong Jeong-hwa, who crossed the border six times to supply the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai with independence campaign funds.

The intensity of our forefathers’ fight for independence was unparalleled in the world. National liberation was not given simply from the outside. It was the result accomplished by our forebears who risked their lives to fight together to the very last moment.

My fellow Koreans,

The most significant achievement of the March First Independence Movement was the establishment of the Korean Provisional Government according to the Declaration of Korean Independence.

The Constitution of the Korean Provisional Government, which was founded through the March First Independence Movement, stipulated that the Republic of Korea was a democratic republic and that the sovereignty of the nation resided in the people. These became the Article 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea.

It was none other than the March First Independence Movement that enabled our forefathers to proceed toward a democratic republic, surmounting monarchy and the colonial rule of Imperialist Japan.

When the March First Independence Movement waned, the sovereign people rose up again. Independence movement was not only for patriotic activists. Merchants waged a movement to close markets. Our ordinary fathers and sisters—woodcutters, gisaeng (female entertainers), the visually impaired and miners—took the lead. The aspirations for the sovereignty of the people, freedom, equality and peace became a part of everyday life of each individual. They went beyond the barriers of class, region, gender and religion and stood tall as individual citizens. It was the March First Independence Movement that helped establish the Republic of Korea as a democratic republic where the public are the owners of the country.

The Korean Provisional Government bequeathed Article 1 of the Constitution and the name of our country as well as the national symbols of the Taegeukgi and the national anthem. This is why our Constitution clearly states that the Republic of Korea upholds the cause of the Provisional Republic of Korea Government.

Last winter, we took a lesson from the events of one century ago. We managed to revive the history of popular sovereignty that had been initiated by the March First Independence Movement. In the most peaceful and magnificent manner, 17 million candles held up high made it possible for that history to unfold. Each light that brightened up the darkness declared once again that each individual was the sovereign owner of the Republic of Korea. The new history of popular sovereignty has begun to be written again as we approach the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea.

My Administration and I will remain firmly committed to safeguarding our country, which was able to start anew thanks to the candlelight rallies, as one of popular sovereignty. We will make efforts to incorporate the spirit of the March First Independence Movement and the lives of the independence activists into the mainstream of the history of the Republic of Korea.

The Korean Provisional Government memorial, which is scheduled to be opened in 2020, will house the countless stories of our forefathers who devoted themselves to the founding of the Republic of Korea. Woodcutters, miners and gisaeng, who participated in the March First Independence Movement, will be recorded as our proud independence fighters.

We will continue to identify the historic sites of the independence movement and the traces of the independence fighters that have yet to be found in Korea and elsewhere. The headquarters of the Liberation Army in Chongqing will be restored in time for the 100th anniversary of the Provisional Government.

Fellow citizens,

We have a huge root in the form of the March First Independence Movement. It is the root of the nation that brought liberation and popular sovereignty. We have great ancestors who engaged in the independence movement and established a democratic republic as well as the second and third generations, born after the founding of the country, who escaped absolute poverty and achieved economic development and democracy. There are also numerous candles that illuminated the path we walk along together in this era.

We no longer need to undervalue ourselves. We have a proud history of achieving independence on our own. We are capable of accomplishing peace for ourselves.

With the capability and confidence of the people, I will turn the March First Independence Movement and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea into a new starting line for the establishment of a permanent peace regime and prosperity based on peace.

To this end, we need to set past wrongs right by ourselves. Dokdo Island is our land that was appropriated first in the process of Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula. It is our indigenous territory. Japan’s current denial of this fact is no different from rejecting self-reflection of the imperialistic invasion.

To resolve the comfort women issue, the Japanese Government, the perpetrator, should not say the matter is closed. The issue of a crime against humanity committed in time of war cannot be closed with just a word. A genuine resolution of unfortunate history is to remember it and learn a lesson from it.

Japan must be able to squarely face the truth of history and justice with the universal conscience of humanity. I hope Japan will be able to genuinely reconcile with its neighbors on which it inflicted suffering and will walk the path of peaceful coexistence and prosperity together. I do not demand any special treatment from Japan. I just hope that as the geographically closest neighboring country, it will be able to move forward toward the future together based on sincere self-reflection and reconciliation.

Fellow Koreans, overseas compatriots,

We have confirmed here today that by turning the March First Independence Movement into a vivid, living memory, the power of the people can make peace on the Korean Peninsula possible.

As we approach the hundredth year of our independence movement, we need to achieve a peace community and an economic community on the Korean Peninsula for the years to come. We need to make sure that the division of the Korean Peninsula will no longer be an obstacle to peace and prosperity. I propose to the people today that we achieve this goal together.

Let us create a country completely free from disparities based on wealth, gender, education and region, as well as the discrimination that has resulted from them. Let us move forward to build a cultural powerhouse that leads world peace - the land which independence leader Kim Gu once dreamed of.

The huge root of the March First Independence Movement will never wither. A fair and just country already started growing in the hearts of the people 99 years ago.

The huge root will cultivate the strong tree of peace and prosperity on the Peninsula. The Republic of Korea will be one of the greatest and most beautiful countries in the world.

Thank you very much.

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proconcordialabor · 7 years

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Finding Buried Treasure

From Vergangenheitsbewältigung to the Moral Energy of Schatzwiederentdeckung

I was enriched last month at the Jeju Reparations Conference at the University of North Carolina Law School, when Professor Robert Westley mentioned a word that he had learned in Germany, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which he translated as “memory work.” I remembered, or thought I did, seeing “memory work” in an article that I had read some months ago, and as soon as I returned to my books and papers in Michigan in late May of 2017, I took up the task of finding that reference. I found two articles that used the phrase “memory work,” but they did not match the specific memory that I had of this term. My memory was that the term “memory work” had been coined by a woman. Neither of the articles that I found confirmed this memory. So perhaps my memory that “memory work” was coined by a woman is a false memory. Needing to better understand the history of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, I learned after some cursory research that the word means something like “working through a difficult past,” i.e., working through traumatic memories, the extreme version of which I sometimes refer to as “atrocity history.” The Wikipedia page for Vergangenheitsbewältigung explains: The German Duden lexicon defines Vergangenheitsbewältigung as “public debate within a country on a problematic period of its recent history—in Germany on National Socialism, in particular This fact that Vergangenheitsbewältigung connotes difficult and traumatic history struck me. First, the meaning of this term resonates with Carl Jung’s notion of the ‘shadow’ and the need for every individual to “make the darkness conscious” in order to ascend to a higher level of consciousness. To be sure, it is not simply making the darkness conscious that is our task. Crucial indeed is accepting and befriending the darkness in ourselves. The clasped hands on the Pro Concordia Labor flag can remind us that in order to ascend, we must labor and partner with our own shadow in order to move forward into light. The making of the darkness conscious is one of the core values of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. We must bear witness to the depth of our darkness in order to transcend it.

But no less important is bearing witness to what the Quakers called our “inner light.” For the past few years, I have been writing and speaking about the importance of what I call “Positive History” – stories of inspiration and cooperation which are illustrative of specific virtues, including, but not limited to, the four Cardinal Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance). Aristotle noted that not all virtues have names, but yet:

We must try … .to invent names ourselves so that we may be clear and easy to follow. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 7)

Following Aristotle, when I created the course The Virtues of Untold Stories: The Peace History of the United States and Korea (which I will to teach as part of my Fulbright Grant at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyunghee University in the Fall of 2017), I named – for the first time - some of the virtues that I had noticed in my reading of Peace History. Among them, transnational fellowship and transgenerational fellowship. When Lenore Selenka of Germany worked with May Wright Sewall of the United States to harness the network of the International Council of Women to support both the 1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences, transnational fellowship was at work. And when we continue the work that these women started, we partake in transgenerational fellowship. Personally, I have found it useful to name the different constructive moral energies that comprise a “red thread” throughout history through which we can see the working of the inner light. I am always renewed when I bear witness to the spinning of that thread.

Observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

As you might imagine, the fact that Vergangenheitsbewältigung denotes the “trauma history” of the shadow, forced in me the question of whether there exists a single German word that denotes working with the memory of the “positive history” of our “inner light”; “remembering inspiring stories,” or, thinking more metaphorically, “finding a buried treasure.” After consulting with one of my German translators, the answer was nicht! There is no such word. So, laboring together with him, we set out to create the word. After 7 or 8 rounds of back-and-forth, we settled on the word Schatzwiederentdeckung. Interestingly, google translate recognizes the English equivalent of this word, whereas it does not recognize (at least not yet) Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I now have my word, Schatzwiederentdeckung. And now I must bring it to life. I do that through ostention – by pointing to specific examples. It is a basic and primitive task. Sometimes these examples are objects which are a sort of “visual shorthand” for a longer story, for instance, that of the Pro Concordia Labor flag. Sometimes these examples are events. But now, the word needs to be brought to life through basic task of enumerating examples. Exploring the philosophical, psychological and sociological questions about Schatzwiederentdeckung are also needed to breathe life into the word. For instance, how do specific examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung affect the development of the self? Are there variations on the efficacy of Schatzwiederentdeckung depending on one’s stage of life? Do examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung within one’s own culture affect the psyche differently than do examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung from another? Speaking anecdotally, I can say that beholding a rich example of Schatzwiederentdeckung during mid-life had a profound effect on me. That example was my encounter with the Peace Palace in 2011. The Peace Palace opened in the Hague, The Netherlands on August 28, 1913. The building, which is home to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice and the largest international law library in the world is the symbolic foundation stone for the normative framework of International Peace and Justice that has its roots in the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. When I was within this historic building, amidst so many beautiful unknowns, I felt the yearning to connect with it in a deeper way. What is this beautiful mystery that I know absolutely nothing about? So opened a Treasure Box, with a bounty of examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung: Bertha von Suttner, the work of Cora di Brazzà, The American School Peace League and the work of E.C. Warriner, the March 1, 1919 movement of Korea. There are so many, and scattered throughout the world. This “scattering” remains a worry. Bertha von Suttner noted that poets and philosophers are the “engineers, mechanicians, and technicians” of “moral forces.” Jane Addams used the term “moral energy”. Let’s combine the two insights and say that Bertha noted that “moral energy” can be engineered, harnessed, and used to propel. This, incidentally, is a substantive claim and a definite position within the debate with ancient Greek philosophy about whether virtue can be taught. Bertha von Suttner: yes. But, she notes, the engineers of moral energies – which, she says, are thoughts and ideas are “scattered through the centuries, scattered in space.” This scattering remains a worry. Although she did not have the word Schatzwiederentdeckung, I do believe Bertha would have acknowledged the moral energy of these stories, and would have issued a plea for collecting examples of them in order in order to leverage their collective moral energy. For she writes in When Thoughts Will Soar (1914, p. 65): How much more powerful their work would be if it were coordinated, if the knowledge of their doctrines, the glory of their names, the magic of their art, proceeding from one central point, should radiate in all directions. Motors and propellers have taught us that power must be concentrated and compressed, in order by explosions to drive the vehicle. Stories that illustrate virtue have moral energy. They help us to drive “our vehicle” upward and forward. This is an old idea. It was expressed by Aristotle when he reminded us that the development of virtue requires bearing witness to actual examples of virtue, i.e., role models. The idea is also expressed by Marcus Aurelius who, at the beginning of his Meditations, enumerates a cast of characters to whom he is grateful. Why? They all modeled various virtues, thereby enabling Marcus to sculpt himself into righteousness. Interestingly, related to the idea that actual examples of virtue have moral energy is something that was posted recently by Humans of New York on its Facebook page:

This young man is clearly influenced by the fortitude of Forrest Gump, who we all know is a fictitious character. Are there no actual examples of fortitude on which this young man can call on for motivation? Wouldn’t actual examples be able to better withstand the doubt that will inevitably arise when marching forward into light? If you are familiar with the opening chapter of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, imagine how almost comical that text would appear if Marcus enumerated not the virtues actual persons, but the virtues of fictitious characters. Actual examples, moreover, provide a response to the “its just a movie” counterargument that we may utter to ourselves when picking ourselves up after the nth failure. Anyway, as I am now breathing life into Schatzwiederentdeckung, let me limn its contours by stating that the story of Forrest Gump is not an example of Schatzwiederentdeckung, though it does have moral energy. Indeed, the etymology of Schatzwiederentdeckung – rooted in the notion of a ‘buried treasure’ – seems to preclude any instance of pop culture from being an instance of this term. Just as there is value in bringing to consciousness repressed traumatic memories, so too is there value in bringing to consciousness untold stories of positive history. I leave it to the readers of this post to formulate another word for stories of pop culture, which are ‘open and obvious’ rather than ‘buried,’ and which, like the story of Forrest Gump, have moral energy that propels us forward and upward.

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proconcordialabor · 7 years

Text

Finding Buried Treasure

From Vergangenheitsbewältigung to the Moral Energy of Schatzwiederentdeckung

I was enriched last month at the Jeju Reparations Conference at the University of North Carolina Law School, when Professor Robert Westley mentioned a word that he had learned in Germany, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which he translated as “memory work.” I remembered, or thought I did, seeing “memory work” in an article that I had read some months ago, and as soon as I returned to my books and papers in Michigan in late May of 2017, I took up the task of finding that reference. I found two articles that used the phrase “memory work,” but they did not match the specific memory that I had of this term. My memory was that the term “memory work” had been coined by a woman. Neither of the articles that I found confirmed this memory. So perhaps my memory that “memory work” was coined by a woman is a false memory. Needing to better understand the history of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, I learned after some cursory research that the word means something like “working through a difficult past,” i.e., working through traumatic memories, the extreme version of which I sometimes refer to as “atrocity history.” The Wikipedia page for Vergangenheitsbewältigung explains: The German Duden lexicon defines Vergangenheitsbewältigung as "public debate within a country on a problematic period of its recent history—in Germany on National Socialism, in particular This fact that Vergangenheitsbewältigung connotes difficult and traumatic history struck me. First, the meaning of this term resonates with Carl Jung’s notion of the ‘shadow’ and the need for every individual to “make the darkness conscious” in order to ascend to a higher level of consciousness. To be sure, it is not simply making the darkness conscious that is our task. Crucial indeed is accepting and befriending the darkness in ourselves. The clasped hands on the Pro Concordia Labor flag can remind us that in order to ascend, we must labor and partner with our own shadow in order to move forward into light. The making of the darkness conscious is one of the core values of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. We must bear witness to the depth of our darkness in order to transcend it.

We must try … .to invent names ourselves so that we may be clear and easy to follow. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 7)

Observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

#Schatzwiederentdeckung #Vergangenheitsbewältigung #Memory #PositiveHistory

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