열사의 탄생 - 한국민중운동에서의 한의 역학 (The Birth of Martyrs—The Dynamics of “Resentment” in the Korean Popular Movement, Korean translation)

The original text of The Birth of Martyrs—The Dynamics of Resentment in the Korean Popular Movement was published in 1997 by Hirakawa Shuppan. The idea for this research traces back to 1991, when Manabe, while staying in South Korea at the end of Roh Tae-woo’s presidency, witnessed the assault and battery of a student by an auxiliary police resulting in the student’s death during a demonstration; this led to students’ and laborers’ suicides by fire in condemnation of the brutality, frequently occurring throughout the country for about a month. These mourning battles against a single person’s death eventually became demonstrations accompanied by fiery slogans and developed into a battle for democratization involving stoning, firebombs, and tear-gas grenades. Meanwhile, some protestors were contemplating even more suicides. When protesters were crushed to death during demonstrations, the battle was further intensified, and there were repeated human casualties of politics. Every year, the spirit of the April Revolution (1960) and the Gwangju Uprising (1980) arose in the democratic movement campaign. The fights to honor the deaths in these historic events are concentrated in April and May of the mid-1990s. These passionately took on the meaning of mourning battles honoring the Gwangju Uprising, whose honor was yet to be restored.
 
This study focuses on the treatment of the dead in South Korea’s democratization movement and inherent motivations with reference to the deceased. It breaks down contemporary Korean history as historical movements from the declaration of democratization in 1987 to the Gwangju Peace Declaration in 1994. From the viewpoint of ceremonial theory centered on shamanism and Confucian ethics, it explores how “unfilial deaths” that defy traditional ideas of life and death and “dirty deaths” that defy anticommunist national credo were the motivation for the democratization battle by making reverence as “martyrdoms” represent defiant values. This book examines how the rapidly increasing number of protest suicides was understood—particularly the 1970 sewing factory/Jeon Tae-il incident, in which a worker committed suicide by burning himself in protest of the Labor Standards Law Compliance and the 1980 Gwangju Uprising—how these were rationalized as movement philosophy, and how these bore results through the involvement of the bereaved families. Particularly, whether the process of worshiping the deceased as “martyrs” led Korean society to the 1987 declaration of democratization is analyzed through ceremonial theory using the two concepts of filial piety in Confucian ethics and grudge/grudge release in Shamanism.

After the declaration of democratization in 1987, through the presidential terms of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun (1998–2007) and the 2000 Inter-Korean Summit, the democratization movement and protest suicides that had become the motivation for the movement drew little public attention. However, the reactionary political conditions under the administrations of Lee Myung-bak to Park Geun-hye led again to the unpredictability of the forces of democratization.
 
Furthermore, when the corruption of the Park administration and its ties to the business world were revealed through “Choi Soon-sil gate” as well as by the April 2014 Sewol disaster and the human death resulting from the use of water cannons at a November 2015 general grassroots uprising, the forces of democratization once again gained power and decided to hold candlelight gatherings every weekend. As a result, the Park administration was overthrown using democratic procedures, and a new president, Moon Jae-in, who had been an aid to the late president Roh Moo-hyun, was elected. In view of the shifts over the past 10 years and the current situation in South Korea and because of the recognition of this book’s historical significance, it will be translated and published in Korea 18 years after its original publication, and once again its genuine value will be considered. The book’s Korean translator, Jeon-nam Kim, is a pastor and democratic activist who was involved in the 1974 national student organization protest incident and was deeply involved in the democratization movement through the 1970s and 1980s in the Japan­–Republic of Korea coalition centered around Chi Myong-gwan; he is a key figure of this book.
 

(Written by MANABE Yuko, Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia / 2016)