1. I am indebted to Sheila Miyoshi Jager of Oberlin College, who has been my principal intellectual partner and sounding board for more than a decade especially on issues dealing with Korea. Many of the points I raise in this article derive directly from our joint effort and as such are as much hers as they are mine. See the following Japan Focus articles on related issues: “Korean Collaborators: South Korea's Truth Committees and the Forging of a New Pan-Korean Nationalism”; “Rewriting the Past/ Re-Claiming the Future: Nationalism and the Politics of Anti-Americanism in South Korea.”

2. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the PostCold War in Asia, forthcoming, Harvard University Press.

3. The New Right seems to be a growing political movement although it has the potential to change the South Korean political landscape by creating a third alternative through the creation of a new political current consisting of an alliance between moderate conservatives from the left and moderate reformers from the right. For background see Kim So Young, “Korea: New Conservative Groups Band Against Roh, Uri Party,” The Korea Herald, November 30, 2004.

4. The discussion here is based largely on the previously mentioned Jager-Mitter volume Ruptured Histories.

5. The official English transcript of the 2004 speech is available at the official web site of the Office of the President: a version of the 2005 speech with a short summary is available.

6. Donald Kirk, “Korea's Generational Clash: A statue of Gen. MacArthur has drawn fire from leftists and support from war vets,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2005. Barbara Demick, “MacArthur Is Back in the Heat of Battle,” Los Angeles Times, September 15, 2005. “What Is the Ruling Party's Position on the Incheon Landing?” Digital Chosun, September 12, 2005.

7. Letter, from the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, to Roh Moo Hyun, September 15, 2005. Facsimile of the letter.

8. The resolution to mark the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan is H.CON.RES.418 which passed the House on July 22, 2004 (text). The resolution marking the 25th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act is H.CON.RES.462 which passed the House on July 15, 2004. The resolutions for marking the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty is H.RES 385), introduced on October 1, 2003, and S.RES 256 (text), introduced on October 31, 2003 in the 108th Congress. See the one Korean story on this issue at “U.S. Congress Killed Korea Resolution,” Digital Chosun, March 25, 2005.

9. Kim Hyun, “Seoul Frowns at Tokyo Approach over Occupied Islets,” Yonhap NewsYonhap News, February 24, 2005. See also the following postings on Japan Focus that provide both South Korean and Japanese views on the Tokdo/Takeshima issue for insights into the historical and technical factors that have turned this into a symbolic issue corroding and distorting Japanese and South Korean views of each other: “Takeshima/Tokdo and the Roots of Japan-Korea Conflict,”, March 28, 2005; Kosuke Takahashi, “Japan-South Korea Ties on the Rocks,” March 28, 2005; Wada Haruki “A Plea to Resolve a Worsening Dispute,”, March 28, 2005; Lee Sang-tae, “Dokdo is Korean Territory,” July 28, 2005.

10. The Chung'ang ilbo poll was part of a national poll on wide ranging issues to mark the 40th anniversary of the newspaper and was conducted between August 24 and September 10, 2005. The results were published on September 22, 2005. Analysis and data in Korean of the political section of the poll is available. An English summary of the major poll findings is available as “Majority Opposes U.S. Troop Presence,” September 22, 2005. The Han'guk ilbo - Yomiuri poll, to mark the 51st anniversary of the Han'guk ilbo, was conducted simultaneously in Korea and Japan to gauge each country's perceptions and views of the other as well as on a number of key regional political issues. The Korean analyses of the results were published by the Han'guk ilbo on June 11, 2005. The Yomiuri discussion of the poll can be found at Japan Focus, “South Korean Mistrust of Japan: Poll,” June 10, 2005.

11. According to some estimates 20-30,000 of those killed or 10-20% of all immediate deaths from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima were Koreans. There were about 50,000 Koreans in Hiroshima. Lisa Yoneyama, “Memory Matters: Hiroshima's Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity,” Public Culture 7.3, Spring 1995, p. 502. The memorial to Korean victims at Hiroshima cites 20,000 of the 200,000 killed were Koreans. In Nagasaki an estimated 10,000 of the population was Korean when the bomb was dropped. I have not been able to locate an accurate estimate of Korean dead, but one recent article infers “thousands.” Kathleen E. McLaughlin, “Foreign A-Bomb Victims are all but Forgotten,” San Francisco Chronicles, Aug 10, 2005. The relevant issue though is not so much those killed as Japanese government compensation of the survivors. See Andreas Hippin, “The end of silence: Korea's Hiroshima, Korean A-bomb victims seek redress,” The Japan Times, August 2, 2005. This article (also available at Japan Focus) cites a Korean estimate of 50,000 killed and 80-120,000 second generation “victims” who should receive compensation.

12. The Kwanghwamun signboard story was first reported by the Han'gyore national daily newspaper on January 24, 2005 under the title “A Stain of Military Dictatorship, Kwanghwamun sign board to be changed” (kunsa tokje ui olluk, Kwanghwamun hyon'pan pakkwinda). The new signboard calligraphy is to be based on rubbings of characters written by King Chongjo (1776-1800).

13. Good overviews of the initiative to recognize leftist nationalists and actions taken to recognize 214 leftists at the 60th anniversary of liberation on August 15, 2005 are provided by Seo Dong-shin's two articles in The Korea Times: “Independence Activists to Get Posthumous Honors,” The Korea Times, February 1, 2005, and “Leftist Independence Activists to Get Honors,” The Korea Times, August 3, 2005. The counterpart action to recognizing leftist nationalists is the civil movement to remove the tombs of “collaborators” from national cemeteries where they are honored as patriots. See for example Yang Hui-sun, “Who are History's Independence Fighters?” (Nuga yoksa ui toknip t'usainga?), OhmyNews.com, March 2, 2005. The “Kim Il Sung as independence fighter” controversy erupted when the preeminent historian and chairman of the national committee to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Korea's liberation, Kang Man-gil, told reporters that he saw Kim Il Sung's anti-Japanese guerilla activities as part of the independence movement. Prof. Han Hong-gu of Sungkonghoe University and a member of the government mandated history Truth Committee (see note 13) had written in 2004 that Kim Il Sung was a “20th century nationalist.” See “Kim Il-sung a Freedom Fighter, Committee Chair Says,” Digital Chosun, April 11, 2005, and Seo Dong-shin, “Kim Il-sung Legacy Controversial in S. Korea,” The Korea Times, July 8, 2005.

14. Norimitsu Onishi, “Korea's Tricky Task: Digging Up Past Treachery,” The New York Times, January 5, 2005. “S. Korea's Spy Agency Picks 7 Cases for Reinvestigation,” Yonhap, February 3, 2005.

15. The Institute's web site provides a comprehensive look at the movement and the efforts to unearth collaborators in South Korea (http://www.banmin.or.kr/). The collaborator list that began in 2001 is due for completion and publication in December 2007. Details of the project such as background, purpose, timeline, and committee members can be found under the “Directory of Collaborators” (ch'inil inmyong sajon) tab.

16. I am indebted to Bruce Cumings for pointing out the colonial origins of this term.

17. The most recent results are from the August-September 2005 Chung'ang ilbo poll referenced in note 11. It showed that 54% of the respondents wanted U.S. forces to depart while 30% wanted them to stay “for a considerable period of time” and only 16% favored a permanent presence.

18. This is of course absurd.

19. The conception here of a regional bipolar balance was first suggested by Robert Ross (“The Geography of the Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-first Century,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), 81-118). I developed this notion further in my study of the long range security implications of certain key factors and trends in Northeast Asia (“Continuity and Transformation in Northeast Asia and the End of American Exceptionalism: A Long-Range Outlook and US Policy Implications,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Autumn 2001), 229-261.