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♠ Warm-UP
1. My biggest worry is now .
So I should .
If you say something about your worries to us, you may get useful advice from others or soothe yourself at least.
In case of no worries, you may think about the opposite one.
The happiest moment to me this month was .
2. Like some of you I went back to my work after long vacation (at first it had seemed to be long but it wasn't as usual). It will be absolutely true that each of you had your own memories from different experiences you went through during this summer.
Among them I'd like to know about the person you met on the recent trip and still lingers in your mind with some stories or some scenes. ( If you don't have any special case, it would be o.k. to talk about old stories to you.)
♠ Main Topic
Luckily or Unluckily we couldn't touch all most all parts of main topic last week. So we unanimously decided to cover that over this week again. That's why this is the same of last one. (any complaints about this?)
* Uri chairman likely to resign under pressure
Ruling Uri Party Chairman Shin Ki-nam will likely bow to intense pressure from his fellow and opposition lawmakers to step down after he confessed to his father's pro-Japanese activities before Korea's 1945 liberation.
Shin will hold a news conference today to announce his resignation, party officials said. He canceled yesterday his entire schedule for today.
In a most unexpected twist to the simmering dispute over whether Korea should investigate the past, the Uri leader reversed himself Monday to admit his father served in the Japanese military during Tokyo's harsh colonial rule of Korea.
When several newspapers first raised suspicions of his father's pro-Japanese activities last month, Shin issued a flat denial and warned the media not to distort the truth.
His admission is a heavy blow to the ruling camp as it seeks to probe unresolved problems of the past century, including rule during 1910-1945 and human rights abuses under military dictatorships.
Uri has attacked Grand National Party Chairwoman Park Geun-hye, daughter of former President Park Chung-hee, for her father's service as a lieutenant in the Japanese imperial army.
Many beleaguered Uri lawmakers demanded Shin's resignation, concerned he might dampen the party's initiative to probe the past.
President Roh Moo-hyun proposed Sunday that the National Assembly form a special committee to investigate pro-Japanese activities and human rights violations by past military governments. Uri responded right away by proposing such a committee to the four opposition parties.
The opposition GNP, opposed to the investigation, stepped up its offense following the latest scandal and called Uri "unqualified to investigate past history."
But the conservative party insisted Shin take responsibility for his father's wrongdoing and his initial attempt to hide the fact.
Rejecting growing calls for his resignation, the Uri chairman told reporters, "I think now is not the stage to decide whether to stay as chairman or not. I will first assess public opinion and the views of my fellow party members."
Shin distanced the issue of his father?Ψs past from the question of addressing contentious history. "The problem of my father is a completely separate matter from the issue of whether to investigate past history. I am willing to comply if my father becomes the subject of an investigation."
While Uri is divided between those who want Shin to resign and others who want him to stay for the stability of the party, already dogged by a number of misfortunes, most political observers believe he will keep the job until early next year.
If Shin steps down now, the Uri Party will have a vacant leadership for almost six months until the party convention early next year.
Uri floor leader Chun Jung-bae, a close associate of Shin, said his colleague should not be punished for his father's faults and that he believed Shin was not intent on covering up the fact or lying.
Despite Chun's defense, many Uri members who feel Shin's presence is a burden in addressing the past appear less than willing to forgive.
Uri Rep. Ahn Young-keun said, "I have nothing to say to the people. Shin must tell the exact story and take responsibility soon. He doesn't deserve to engage in politics."
Another Uri member, Woo Won-shik, also demanded Shin resign. "Now is a very important time when we are trying to shed light on past history. The chairman must step down to take responsibility for undermining ethics himself."
While demanding Shin's resignation, the GNP sought to thwart the ruling party's initiative to settle past controversies. It urged the government and the ruling party to focus on reviving the stagnant domestic economy, saying nobody was free from past history.
"As there are few Koreans who are free from past history, investigating the past could cause chaos and divisions in the nation," GNP spokesman Yim Tae-hee said.
(soyoung@heraldm.com)
By Kim So-young
[Commentary]A dictator's daughter
There are few better times for Koreans to discuss the distortion of history than on Liberation Day. There is much to study about the history of the 20th century, if Koreans are to shed light on every bit of truth and thereby do justice to all the victims of the nation's tragic events. And there is no doubt that Japan's colonial rule from 1910 to 1945 caused many problems that continued through much of the turbulent century.
President Roh Moo-hyun was absolutely right to devote much of his speech on Sunday, the anniversary of national liberation, to historical issues. Disappointing his audience at the ceremony at the Independence Hall, however, he failed to say a single word about the role of imperial Japan or the latest controversy surrounding China's aggressive scheme to tamper with ancient Korean history.
Instead, the president confined his talk strictly to treason by Koreans during the colonial period, and violations of human rights and lawless brutality perpetrated under the past governments of military dictators. Then he breezed through the need to overhaul the election system, inter-Korean reconciliation, our pressing economic difficulties and relations with the United States.
Few doubt that our president is honest. Indeed, he could have avoided many of the ordeals he has faced as president over the past year and a half, if he had refrained from speaking his mind so candidly. He has sometimes been too honest for a politician, let alone the leader of a country faced with a myriad of formidable challenges at home and abroad.
Our president has never been one to take a detour, or even beat around the bush, in delivering his convictions. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that the president, a quick-witted tactician, could have failed to foresee the uproar he would generate from the political opposition as well as the critical public.
What made him divulge his single-minded obsession with the extremely sensitive issue of bringing to light the pro-Japanese activities of Korean collaborators? What made him lose his balance again so egregiously after announcing that he would push through his capital relocation plan in disregard of raging objections? He must be well aware that neither action is so urgent.
The only feasible explanation seems to be that the president, as well as the ruling Uri Party, cannot afford to ignore the potential challenge from opposition leader Park Geun-hye in the next presidential election. No wonder. Recent opinion polls have shown approval ratings tilted in favor of the chairwoman of the Grand National Party, while Roh's popularity has dipped to the 10 to 20 percent range.
Hence the premature campaign for the 2007 presidential race when the majority of voters couldn't care less. Worse still, the campaign is onerously negative as it is obviously intended to dig into the dark legacy of Park Geun-hye's father - the late President Park Chung-hee.
Roh's doubtful political discretion and the ruling circles aside, however, this is exactly what the GNP leader should have anticipated when she decided to enter politics, not to mention running for president. As she once furiously retorted to an outspoken critic within her own party, she herself knows better than anyone else "whose daughter she is."
Park has no choice but to face the public scrutiny, as there seems to be no justifiable reason to oppose the proposed investigation into the truth, though it remains to be seen whether the probe will actually lead to "reconciliation and forgiveness for the future of the nation," as the investigation's advocates claim.
This will be the very first hurdle Park has to overcome if she hopes to reach the top office as the daughter of a man known as a ruthless dictator, though also the architect for Korea's miraculous economic development during the 60s and the 70s.
Setting aside her deep loyalty to her father, Park will have to cooperate in the investigation to disclose whatever remains to be explored about her father's controversial life. On the positive side, she may be able to look back at her father's career as that of another politician who struggled through a tumultuous page of modern Korean history.
The final judgment will be made by the people, who decide how to assess his checkered career - as a young officer of the Japanese imperial army who sympathized with communism, and then the mastermind of a coup and an iron-fisted ruler who abused his power to stay in office for almost two decades before he was assassinated by his chief intelligence officer.
The people will also have to decide what her father's role means about Park Geun-hye herself.
Now an influential politician and the first Korean woman to be within striking distance of the top post, Park meanwhile needs to be objective about her family background as well as all other unearned assets and liabilities. Her chances will rest in how she demonstrates her clout contesting the economic and diplomatic policies of the incumbent administration. She must prove that she is a no-nonsense politician who can do more than smiling and waving to nostalgic supporters.
no
2004.08.18
[EDITORIAL]Family liability
In a modern democratic society, family liability is prohibited in criminal justice. A person cannot be discriminated against just because another family member has committed a criminal or other ignominious act. Such discrimination is little different from calling for the admission of guilt by association.
Though such unfair treatment was legally banned in Korea in 1894, the practice raised its ugly head as the nation went through the social upheavals caused by Japan's 1910-1945 colonial occupation and the 1950-53 Korean War. The nation belatedly removed this disagreeable legacy when it rewrote the Constitution in 1980, which now reads in part: "No citizen shall suffer unfavorable treatment on account of an act not of his own doing but committed by a relative."
No one should be held accountable for an act he or she has not committed. That is a basic human right, whether stated in the Constitution or not.
This principle should also apply to Rep. Shin Ki-nam, leader of the ruling Uri Party, whose father reportedly served as a sergeant in the imperial Japanese military police. Accordingly, great care must be exercised in referring to the current controversy involving Rep. Shin and his father.
Rep. Shin's case becomes even more complicated, given that his party is pushing to shed light on those Koreans who betrayed their nation and collaborated with imperialist Japan.
This is not to say the party is misguided when it is trying to find out who took prominent posts in the post-liberation Korean military and police after hiding their roles in rounding up Korean independence fighters, torturing them and sending them to prison. That is a noble mission, indeed. But the problem is that the party is suspected of being politically motivated in its search for the truth about collaborators.
Under Shin's leadership, the ruling Uri Party is seeking to revise a law which permits investigation into military officers, among others, with the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher, so that officers of all ranks will now be subject to investigation. This proposed amendment is the main source of suspicion harbored by Rep. Park Geun-hye, leader of the main opposition Grand National Party.
Rep. Park apparently believes the dagger is pointed at her throat, as her father, the late President Park Chung-hee, served as a lieutenant for Japan and, in 1961, took power in a military coup he led as a major general.
But a convincing case can be made that it is also appropriate to include military police sergeants among those to be probed if lieutenants are included. As a renowned conservative novelist correctly points out, they often committed more heinous acts against fellow Koreans than did low-level military officers.
Another issue of vital concern is what Rep. Shin said about what his father did. He said his father continued to be a schoolteacher until liberation and joined the police thereafter. But Rep. Shin later reversed himself and confirmed a news magazine report that his father had served as a military police sergeant during the colonial era, after a two-year stint as a teacher.
When he was found to have lied to the public, Rep. Shin lost the moral high ground in his party's campaign to uncover what Koreans did to help Japan's occupation, and to rewrite history based on newly discovered facts. He had called for suspected collaborators and their survivors to make confessions and put an end to the historical controversy, even while hiding secrets about his own father.
Rep. Shin will do well to resign from the post of party leader, not because his father was a gendarmerie sergeant, but because he lied about it to the public. He will be a laughingstock if he clings to power. At the same time, the ruling party should reflect on whether it is really impartial in its self-imposed mission to have history rewritten.
1. What do you think of investigating pro-Japanese activities and human rights violations by past military governments ?
2. How do you feel about Shin Ki-nam's resignation because of his father's past career?
3. What do you think of 박근혜 as a nominee for the next presidential election in the same context of no.2
4. If a special committee got the results of its investigation about collaborators with the Japanese colonialists and human right abuser, how would you like to deal with ? ( eg, you want to throw open their list to the public or put them on history text books, etc.)