Yu+Sun+Chin

Discussion Question #8

Question: Write a short reflection of what you learned from these readings. With the benefit of hind sight and knowledge of China and Japan, would Korea have been better off if it had “opened up to the west?”

Though Korea was admittedly held behind in global affairs by its isolation, I think that they made a wise decision in "advocating the peace" for they were able to retain their cultural identity. By reading Korea Unmasked, I realized just how vital it was for Koreans to have a sense of orthodoxy after all of the struggles and invasions they had been through. Even if they had opened up to foreign influence earlier than they were forced to, their cultural uniqueness would have been ripped out from under them. China and Japan, though they were increasingly pressured by foreign influences to open up, still remained their core values of culture. However even with this knowledge, I think that it would also have been wise for Korea to slightly open their doors to foreign influence while closing enough to retain their identity. Their neighbors were stripped of all their power over foreigners through continually trying to resist them; they were forced to open up in the end. In order to avoid this conflict, Korea would have been better off if it just kept a balance. Nogun-ri Massacre

The massacre at Nogun-ri was strikingly similar to the Korea-Japan controversy in its cover-up of the war crimes that they committed and, ironically, how they compensated for their actions and Korea's following reactions. Even though japan slightly differed in its complete denial of their war crimes in 1910-1945, they eventually fessed up to their actions and apologized, regardless of the remaining displeasure of the Korean victims. However, I can understand how their compensation didn't make much of a difference to the victims for there was still some suspicions of the U.S. Army covering up evidence of the whole scale of the incident. Thus, I still hold the same opinion of compensation: these victims should be compensated for every hit they took, especially if the perpetrators were still unwilling to fess up to the untarnished, no matter how ugly, scale of their crimes. This situation could be perceived as different because it was supposedly done in the suspicious fog and chaos of war like in Nanjing, and thus could give more leniency to the Americans. However, just because it was done during the "heat of war" does not erase the crimes and hurt done to the victims.