Punish only the traitors in the Korean War

Choi Min-woo
The author is the political news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo.

It is dangerous to judge the past from the present perspective — particularly so for Korea, a country with a tumultuous history. The act of stigmatizing someone as being “pro-Japanese and anti-national” for shying from the independence movement or having worked in a Japanese government office during the colonial period constitutes violence. To accuse someone of betraying the nation for following Communism and Socialism, which had been widely popular during the period, falls under McCarthyism. The modern and contemporary history requires a multi-dimensional, balanced and delicate approach.

That being said, the Ministry of National Defense’s plan to move the bust of Korean independence fighter Hong Beom-do out of the Korean Military Academy is premature. The ministry cites his past affiliation with the Soviet Communist Party as the cause for the relocation. After his heroic role in the Battles of Fengwudong and Qingshanli in northeastern China in 1920, he joined the Communist Party in 1927. Hong also cannot avoid liability in the internal conflict among Korean independence fighters, which led to a deadly clash in 1921 between the Korean fighters and the Soviet Red Army in Svobodny, Russia. Even under the Communist system, the Soviets at the time supported the independence movement of minority ethnic groups. You can hardly blame the independence fighters for relying on the Soviets — the enemy’s enemy — during the turbulent period after Korea lost its sovereignty. During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a long-time anti-Communist, famously said, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons.” Hong died in Kazakhstan, a Soviet republic at the time, in 1943 before Korea’s liberation from Japan. He is totally irrelevant to Kim Il Sung’s founding of North Korea or his invasion of South Korea.

But the case of Chung Yool-sung (1914-1976) is entirely different. Gwangju Mayor Kang Ki-jeong is pushing to build a memorial park for him in the city at a cost of 4.8 billion won ($3.6 million) to “commemorate the sad life of an independence fighter and musician who was forced to end his life as a Chinese.” But that’s completely misleading. The Gwangju-born composer known in China as Zheng Lucheng made the list of the “100 heroes and model figures who made outstanding contributions to the founding of New China” in 2009 for writing the anthem of the People’s Liberation Army. The Chinese soldiers sang the military anthem of “March of the Eighth Route Army” when they invaded South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, killing or injuring 770,000 South Korean and UN soldiers.

The government plans to relocate the busts of legendary independence fighter Hong Beom-do erected in the Ministry of National Defense building and at the Korean Military Academy, citing his record of serving as a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after his heroic role in the Battles of Fengwudong and Qingshanli against Japanese forces in 1920. [YONHAP]

After the liberation, Chung went to North Korea and worked as the head of the North Korean army band. He also wrote the military anthem of “March of North Korean People’s Army.” When the Korean War broke out, he joined the Chinese forces to fight against South Korea. He wrote military anthems to raise the morale of the North Korean troops fighting against UN allied forces. While residing in Seoul briefly after capturing the capital during the war, Chung took the Joseon Dynasty’s royal court music scores and other relics to China. He was not an involuntary traitor but an orchestrator of the aggression or an eager participant in the war against his home country. Does it make sense to create a memorial park to commemorate a man who pointed the gun straight at South Korea?

The city of Gwangju has named a road after Zheng Lucheng and holds a children’s music festival after his name. The phenomenon partly owed to the pro-Chinese mood under the Moon Jae-in administration but more fundamentally to the opaque liability for the Korean War under the liberal government. On June 25, marking the 73rd anniversary of the outbreak of the war, former President Moon Jae-in introduced the book “1950 U.S.-China War,” which clearly explains why the Korean War was an international war. He was more or less backing China’s claim that it joined the war to help North Korea fight against the United States — and dexterously watered down the liability of Kim Il Sung and Stalin for starting the tragic war. On Memorial Day in 2019, Moon upheld the Korean Volunteer Army founded by independence fighter Kim Won-bong as the root of the South Korean army. The former president overlooked the fact that Kim Won-bong served in senior posts in North Korea under Kim Il Sung and received a medal for his role in the Korean War.

The standards should be clear. It is ridiculous to define the dispute over Chung and Hong as an ideological battle. Chung should be denied not because he was a communist but because he was a war criminal. Hong should be honored because he had fought for the independence of his country regardless of his communist background. The freedom of thought is a constitutional value in this country. Free democracy has a greater universal value due to its engagement across ideological spectrums. Purging those on the opposite side recklessly is what Communist totalitarianism and anti-state forces do.