Written by: Choe Sang-hyun
In the historical past of South Korea’s struggle for democracy, the 1980 rebellion in Gwangju stands as one of many proudest moments. Thousands of civilians took to the streets to protest the navy dictatorship, and lots of have been killed by safety forces. The bloody occasion is sanctified in textbooks because the “Gwangju Democratization Movement”.
However, right-wing extremists have supplied another, extremely provocative view of what occurred: Gwangju, they are saying, was not a heroic sacrifice for democracy, however a “riot” instigated by North Korean communists, who protested. had infiltrated the motion.
Such conspiracy theories, which some historians take critically, are spreading quickly in South Korea, the place a political divide – rooted within the nation’s tyrannical and infrequently violent fashionable historical past – is being perpetuated on-line.
President Moon Jae-in’s governing social gathering has produced a slate of laws, a few of which have already develop into legislation, aimed toward stamping out false narratives about some delicate historic topics, together with Gwangju. His supporters say he’s defending the reality. Free speech advocates and Moon’s conservative enemies have accused the president of censorship and utilizing historical past as political weapons.
Democracies around the globe are struggling to fight the corrosive results of social media and propaganda on politics, debating the place and the place to attract the strains between faux information and free speech. In the United States and elsewhere, debate has centered on the facility of social media firms, on the left to unfold hatred and false conspiracy theories, and on the correct to ban customers like Donald Trump.
But some democracies have sought to police speech to the extent that South Korea is contemplating it, and there’s debate about whether or not efforts to suppress misinformation will result in widespread censorship or foster authoritarian ambitions. .
“Whether I am right or wrong should be decided through free public debate through the engine of democracy,” stated Ji Man-won, a number one proponent of the doctrine of North Korean participation in Gwangju. “Instead, the government is using its power to dictate history.”
Arguments over which messages must be allowed and which must be suppressed are sometimes about nationwide historical past and identification. In the United States, there was debate concerning the results of racism and slavery within the nation’s previous and current, and about how these topics must be taught in class. Supporters of the brand new legal guidelines say they do what Germany has performed in attacking the lies of Holocaust denial.
South Korea has lengthy prided itself on its dedication to freedom of expression, however additionally it is a rustic the place going towards the mainstream can have dire penalties.
Historical points, equivalent to cooperation with Japanese colonists or wartime civilian genocide, have divided the nation for many years. Defamation is a prison offence. Under payments launched by Moon’s social gathering, selling revisionist narratives about delicate subjects equivalent to Gwangju or “Comfort Woman” – Korean intercourse slaves for Japan’s World War II military – is also against the law.
By performing on misinformation, Moon resides as much as the marketing campaign’s promise to present Gwangju its rightful place in historical past. But by criminalizing so-called “historical distortions”, he’s additionally stepping right into a political mine.
The Korea History Society and 20 different historic analysis establishments issued a joint assertion final month, warning that Moon’s progressive authorities, which presents itself as a champion of democratic values ​​secured by means of sacrifices equivalent to Gwangju, was truly prison. Let historical past set by weakening them through the use of the specter of punishment.
A legislation sponsored by Moon’s social gathering, which took impact in January, orders as much as 5 years in jail for individuals spreading “lies” about Gwangju. Party lawmakers additionally launched a invoice in May that requires as much as 10 years in jail for these praising Korea’s colonial rule of Japan from 1910 to 1945.
The invoice would arrange a panel of specialists on “true history” to detect distortions in interpretations of delicate historic subjects, together with civilian killings in the course of the Korean War and human rights violations beneath earlier navy dictatorships – and order corrections.
Yet one other invoice from the social gathering would criminalize “denying” or “distorting or falsifying facts” a couple of current incident, the 2014 sinking of the yacht Sivol, a catastrophe that killed lots of of scholars and humiliated the conservative authorities. then in energy. Conservative lawmakers, for his or her half, launched a invoice final month that might penalize those that deny that North Korea sank a South Korean naval ship in 2010.
Kim Jong-in, head of the Korea History Society, referred to the invoice on Japanese colonial rule, saying, “It is a populist approach to history that appeals to widespread anti-Japanese sentiment to consolidate its political power. ” “Who would study the history of the colonial era if their research results were judged in court?”
Recent polls have discovered that the most important battle dividing Korean society is between progressives and conservatives, who’re each wanting to form and censor historical past and textbooks to their benefit.
Conservative dictators as soon as arrested, tortured and executed dissidents within the title of the National Security Act, which criminalized “praising, inciting or promoting” any habits that was pro-North Korean or sympathetic to communism.
Conservatives at the moment need historical past to focus on the constructive points of their heroes – such because the authoritarian founding president of South Korea, and Park Chung-hee, a navy dictator – and their success in combating communism and driving the nation out. Poverty after the Korean War
Progressives typically insist on conservative dictatorships, such because the assassinations in Gwangju. They additionally condemn these they name “Chinil”, pro-Japanese Koreans, whom they are saying collaborated with colonial leaders and prospered in the course of the Cold War by rebranding themselves as anti-communist crusaders. .
Still ji says that there are progressive individuals who comply with communist concepts that are a risk to the democratic values ​​of the nation.
Much of this debate is being performed on-line, the place some extremely partisan podcasters and YouTubers have as many viewers as nationwide tv applications do.
“Ideally, conspiracy theories and irrational ideas should be dismissed or marginalized through the market of public opinion,” stated Park Sang-hoon, a chief political scientist on the Seoul-based residents’ group, Political Power Plant. “But they have become part of the political agenda here.” The mainstream media is “helping them gain legitimacy,” he stated.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
