Dr. Woon Do Choi, an internationally recognized scholar at the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, will be presenting a free lecture sponsored by the PSU Center for Japanese Studies, taking place tonight at 6 p.m. in Smith Memorial Student Union, room 327/8.
Dr. Woon Do Choi, an internationally recognized scholar at the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, will be presenting a free lecture sponsored by the PSU Center for Japanese Studies, taking place tonight at 6 p.m. in Smith Memorial Student Union, room 327/8.
In his lecture, Choi will address the complex and controversial question of what it will take for Korea to forgive Japan, the nation that once colonized it. PSU History Department faculty member and Center for Japanese Studies Director Dr. Ken Ruoff believes that Choi is in a unique position to tackle such an issue.
“Dr. Choi, first and foremost, is an expert on Japan,” Ruoff said. “He knows Japan very well. In fact, one of his many areas of expertise is military security in the United States, Japan and South Korea, and he’s one of those people that views security in a more expansive manner.”
Ruoff said that while dialogue between South Korea and the U.S., and Japan and the U.S., is strong, there is not as much happening between South Korea and Japan as one might expect of East Asia’s two great liberal democracies. The reasons for this are bound up in the painful history that the two nations share, which makes the issue a visceral one that is rarely confronted in such a head-on and constructive manner.
“Japan was the first country in modern Asia to colonize its neighbors—first of all Korea,” Ruoff said. “Japan formally made Korea a colony in 1910, and at times their rule was heavy handed and
downright brutal.”
Ruoff, himself a scholar specializing in Japanese history, does not gloss over even the darkest chapters of this colonial history.
“Probably the most infamous instance of this terrible colonial exploitation is the so-called ‘comfort women’ issue,” Ruoff said. “Starting around 1939, Japanese started basically turning Korean women into sexual slaves for the Japanese military. Perhaps as many as 100,000 Korean women were turned into sexual slaves; the Japanese militia marches into a Korean village and the last poor villager to stuff his daughter into a hiding place has her taken away and shipped off to a military brothel.”
Another method, according to Ruoff, simply involved advertising legitimate job offers, then forcing the women who applied into sexual slavery upon their arrival.
Such practices make it easy to understand why relations between Japan and South Korea continue to be strained, but Ruoff was quick to point out that this such history lessons are hardly unique to
East Asia.
“If you changed the names of the countries and the name of the scholar, this is a topic that could just as well apply to so many different countries,” Ruoff said. “Right here in America, for instance. What would it take for Native Americans to forgive their oppressors? African Americans? What this is really about is how we come to terms with these dark chapters in our past.”
According to Ruoff, this particular dark chapter now stands in the way of a more democratic and secure East Asia. While Japan’s emperor has formally apologized to Korea, the issue remains one that is used by many nations to further various agenda in the region. China is among the nations that use the issue to limit Japanese influence in certain regional issues.
The nature of Choi’s lecture highlights the critical and in-depth tone of the PSU Center for Japanese Studies events, which offer a rich and nuanced view of Japan’s history, culture and people. Other events on this year’s calendar include Japanese author and journalist Mika Tsutsumi’s lecture on her book Poverty Superpower America, workshops in traditional Japanese drama with PSU faculty member Dr. Laurence Kominz and a lecture on the international implications of Japanese internment in the U.S. during World War II.
It is these types of events that Ruoff believes make for a true university experience.
“A true university provides almost endless multifaceted intellectual stimulation, even outside of the classroom,” Ruoff said. “In this global era it’s even more important that we regularly bring in scholars from overseas. The influence of America will remain great, but it is declining and it behooves Americans to hear what others have to say about these issues.”
