The Korean War continues to be the longest drawn conflict in the 20^th century. Despite relative peace and tranquillity at the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas, the war officially is still ongoing sixty-four years from its breakout. Korea thus remains one of the few regions today that remains plagued by the Cold War. A belligerent North Korea is not South Korea’s only prevailing concern. Local sentiments towards bringing the perpetrators of atrocities committed under Japanese colonial rule continued to heat up to a point where the Korean Government decided to institute a Truth and Reconciliation Commission tasked with investigating these incidents of Korean history.

On October 25, 2014 the Centre for the Study of Korea at the Asian Institute invited Dr. Kim Dong-Choon to speak at the Afterlives of the Korean War symposium hosted at the Munk School of Global Affairs. Dr. Kim features on the list of 100 people who will lead Korean society and is a former Standing Commissioner of the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation commission. Many authorities on Korea reference his academic work, and his views provided the audience an insight into the future of truth and reconciliation in Korea. In his keynote address, Dr. Kim attributed the recent rise of anti-Japanese sentiment and call for criminal arbitration of Japanese atrocities – especially those pertaining to Korean comfort women – to the fact that global Cold War has kept this conflict at bay. This global conflict between communism and capitalism not only manifested itself within the two Koreas, but also lead to the idea of anti-communism in Korea becoming a way of gaining political capital. This only helped to keep issues like those of Japanese atrocities from surfacing.

However, according to Dr. Kim, focus on the Korean War as part of the mainstream Korean discourse has allowed for issues relating to victims of mass massacres to come to the fore. Families of the victims of the Guchang Massacre and the Jeju incident (both massacres of the early Korean War) initiated the process of revealing their suffering on a political platform. This lead to the Guchang and Jeju special laws being enacted by the government, followed by a correction of family registry, which paved the path for the eventual Truth and Reconciliation Commission. To date, however, families of the victims of several other massacres through history await arbitration, making the task of the commission harder than that of any court of law.

Also present at the lecture were Professors Lisa Yoneyama and Andre Schmidt, both from the East Asian Studies department, who as moderators of the keynote provided their input on what lead to the soldiers causing massacres and committing heinous crimes of war. The lecture provided intellectual nourishment for all Korea enthusiasts, giving attendees a holistic picture of hurdles faced by the commission in yet another attempt by the Korean government to reconcile with its past.

-written by  S. Taha H. Shah, a third year student in the Contemporary Asian Studies Program

This article is part of  a series of articles written by undergraduate students affiliated with the Asian Institute about events hosted by the Asian Institute.