 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo, Osaka and other cities. No mention here, for example, of the fact that many Japanese survived the early postwar years via black market activities or any other contextualization of the Zainichi Korean experience.
Not only does the article quote an elderly Japanese resident who describes Korean control of the Tsuruhashi black market, but the interviewee bridles at the fact that Koreans, particularly those who dominated the black market, “walked around as if they owned the place,” and Ko in particular (by association) “walked around with a proud bearing,” though the article does not directly charge him with black market activity.
The brief mentions of the US-Korean War are equally interesting. I am particularly interested in the use of sentences with no subject: “The division in the Korean Peninsula led to the creation of South Korea and North Korea in 1948.” No agents at work here. If my recollection is correct, the division did not simply “happen”. Rather, then army officer, later Secretary of State, Dean Rusk drew a line across a map at the 38th parallel and the US then persuaded the Soviet Union to accept the demarcation as a means of preventing armed conflict between the two former wartime allies. And placing Seoul and the majority of the Korean population under US rule. Indeed, the United States nowhere appears in the article’s several references to the Korean War.
That includes the discussion of Jeju, the island off South Korea that produced the largest number of Korean migrants to Japan including Ko. The author states that “In 1948, islanders clashed with the right-wing South Korean authorities. The conflict resulted in numerous fatalities, and some islanders fled to Japan.” Numerous fatalities? Indeed numerous, and the figures remain contested to this day. As Ko Sun Hui Kate Barclay and conclude, “Local records show 14,028 people [out of an estimated population of 300,000] were registered as killed or missing that day, and since many more deaths would not have been registered it has been estimated that 20-30,000 people were killed. (“Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation: Jeju Island Under Japan and Korea,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 30, 2007, link.) Others have suggested higher casualties, cf. Wikipedia’s estimate of 14,000 to 60,000 (link). Once again, the agent is obscure: but we know that the major killings were carried out by ROK forces together with rightwing vigilantes. The article goes on to relate the fact that a North Korean documentary about the Jeju Island clash was aired in 2003, explaining this as “a time when Ko Young Hee’s political influence was growing.” However, the Jeju Uprising was (and is) a longtime staple of nationalist historiography in North Korea, which had no need for Ko’s political rise to record the events.
After presenting Ko as a drunk, the article allows that, in 1956, he “started his own professional wrestling group.” Why? “ . . . perhaps because he was having difficulties making a living solely from judo.” In a land in which entrepreneurship is routinely praised, Ko’s endeavor is painted in desperate colors.
The article is, in short, indicative of the difficulties that lie ahead in restoring North Korea-Japan relations to normalcy in the wake of the political movement to make Korean kidnapping of Japanese nationals in the 1980s the pivotal issue of Japanese diplomacy, and the eradication of consciousness of Japanese crimes against Koreans over the half century of colonial rule.
Mark Selden is a coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Journal. His most recent books are Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics and China, East Asia and the Global Economy. Regional and Historical Perspectives. His home page is www.markselden.info
Recommended citation: Kokita Kiyohito, Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Mark Selden, Ko Tae Mun, Ko Chung Hee, and the Osaka Family Origins of North Korean Successor Kim Jong Un, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 1 No 2, January 3, 2011.