A return to McCarthyism?

Park Jung-ho

The author is a senior editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.

The movie “Oppenheimer” is new yet familiar. The film has two wings — science and politics. After the United States dropped the atomic bomb developed by J. Robert Oppenheimer on Hiroshima, Japan finally surrendered. U.S. President Harry Truman summoned and praised him. Truman encouraged Oppenheimer to concentrate more on research. Oppenheimer hesitated. “Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands,” Oppenheimer told Truman in the movie. “You think anyone in Hiroshima or Nagasaki gives a shit who built the bomb? They care who dropped it. I did. Hiroshima isn’t about you,” Truman replied. As Oppenheimer left the Oval Office, Truman said, “Don’t let that crybaby back in here.”

The film is not easy. Quantum mechanics, the atomic bomb race between the United States, Germany and the Soviet Union and Oppenheimer’s work and love are tightly intertwined over the course of three hours. At the center of it all is the communist debate. It is a biography of the eccentric physicist Oppenheimer and at the same time, it is a review of the times in which he lived. After watching the movie, I read the script separately and looked back on the overall flow.

The original work of the film is Oppenheimer’s biography, “American Prometheus,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Oppenheimer, who was dismissed as a traitor after being the father of the atomic bomb, was likened to Prometheus in Greek mythology, who suffered the God’s punishment for gifting fire to mankind. The Congressional hearing of Oppenheimer, who was accused of being a communist and a Soviet spy for opposing the development of hydrogen bombs, led the storyline. Labeled as a communist in 1954, Oppenheimer was cleared of the wrongful charges only late last year, 68 years later.

Oppenheimer was an enigma. Although he was a scientist, he supported the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. He read the ancient Indian scripture “Bhagavad Gita” in Sanskrit. He liked Picasso’s paintings and was a passionate fan of “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot. His wife and younger brother were also members of the Communist Party of the United States. But he opposed rigid ideology. “I’m committed to thinking freely about how to improve our world,” he said in the movie. “Why limit yourself to one dogma?”

In the preface of the script, Kai Bird, co-author of “American Prometheus,” said Oppenheimer was the chief victim of the 1950s’ witch-hunts, like Galileo was humiliated by the Roman Church in 1633. Bird also said the true tragedy of Oppenheimer was that the American society’s ability to have honest discussions about politics and science was damaged.

It is understandable. The 1950s were the time when the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was intensifying. The conflict between capitalism and communism reached its peak. The Korean War started with Kim Il Sung’s invasion of the South. Nevertheless, the madness of the era, in which a genius scientist was broken by associating him with the Communist Party, remains unchanged.

Korean society is also in a chaotic ideological war these days. And it is perplexing that the origin of this war is the presidential office of Yoon Suk Yeol. Since we are living in a country with real-time North Korean nuclear threats, it is essential to remain alarmed about communism. However, it’s nonsense to link General Hong Beom-do’s independence movement against colonial Japan to the communist parties of the Soviet Union and China and call the critics of the Yoon administration “communist totalitarians.” It feels like we have returned to the anti-communist period of the 1970s.

President Yoon’s language is solemn and straightforward. And it feels like it is getting more and more intense. Instead of saying that a bird flies with both left and right wings, he stressed that birds can fly only when they fly in the same direction. But in the pluralistic society of the 21st century, the same direction can bring about yet another totalitarianism. It can literally intensify outdated ideological divisions.

Why does Yoon criticize communism every day? Does this mean the times are so dangerous or is he lacking confidence in running the country?

One thing is clear. It is much more difficult to unite public sentiment than to divide it — just like it is more difficult to develop a hydrogen bomb using nuclear fusion than an atomic bomb using nuclear fission. It’s important for the president to use the two wings that he had long emphasized — fairness and common sense, as well as freedom and pragmatism.