Loyal Patriot? Traitorous Collaborator? The Yun Ch'iho Diaries and the Question of National Loyalty

In August 2004 Republic of Korea (South Korea) President Roh Moo Hyun called for the creation of a parliamentary commission to identify Koreans who had collaborated with Japan during its thirty-six years of colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula. The crimes of these collaborators, Roh explained, constituted “[a]cts of betrayal in support of imperialist Japan and colonial rule at the time our patriotic forefathers were staking their lives in the fight for the nation [and remain] hidden in the shade of history.”¹ Critics accused Roh of attempting to rectify the past “through a political initiative” and warned that his inquiry “would have an explosive and inflammatory effect on the country that might well be hard to control.”² Disregarding this warning, one year later the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities compiled a list of 3,090 collaborators, and promised to add more names in the near future.³

The term “collaborator,” as used pejoratively to describe someone whose actions or attitudes in support of a foreign occupation can be considered treasonous,⁴ is controversial primarily because it judges suspect individuals based on a context politically different from that which they committed their alleged crimes. It fails to consider the fact that the accused held a different sense of state and nation than that held by their accusers. It also attempts to render a judgment based on the activities of the accused, and fails to consider the pressures, reasoning, or circumstances that influenced the decisions they made. Timothy Brook notes, “those who appear to have chosen the reality of collaboration may have been engaging in a calculus of options and risks different from the simplicities that hindsight, and the nationalist narrative that thrives on it, hands to us.”⁵ In the case of Korea, few of the people listed as traitors remain alive to explain their case. A fairer assessment of their alleged betrayal requires a more comprehensive inquiry into the cognitive reasoning and ambitions behind these activities.

The case of Yun Ch’iho (1864–1945) offers an appropriate example to test the justice of a collaboration charge precisely because of the complications and ambiguities it presents. Yun’s extensive contacts with Japanese nationals, and the support and assistance he offered to the Japanese colonial government during Japan’s participation in World War II, led to placing his name on various lists of collaborators. But there was an earlier phase in Yun’s life, when previous to Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910 he encouraged political, social, and cultural reform in Korea that established his qualifications as a Korean patriot. A review of his extensive eleven-volume diary that he maintained primarily in English throughout the pre- and post-annexation phases of his life provides a unique insight into his actions and the motivations that influenced them.

Collaboration Examined

Efforts by Koreans to identify collaborators predate President Roh’s recent campaign. The first post-war attempt to identify pro-Japanese collaborators was brought to a halt in 1949 by the first South Korean President, Syngman Rhee (1948–1960). Over the next four decades, which included the long period of autocratic rule by Park Chung Hee (1961–1979), investigations into collaboration became taboo. The democratization of South Korea starting in the late 1980s, however, helped to revitalize efforts to address collaboration. A three-volume set of biographies of ninety-nine members of the “pro-Japanese faction” (ch’inil p’a) that appeared in 1993 constituted a fresh effort to finally address this issue. Published on the 74th anniversary of Korean people’s most ambitious effort to drive the Japanese from their homeland—the March First (1919) Independence Movement—this project identified the most notorious Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese colonial administration.⁶

The root of the problem, however, is found in the days that surrounded Japan’s surrender and after the United States and the Soviet Union divided the Korean peninsula. Kim Pong’u, in his introduction to the ch’inilp’a volumes, blames the U.S. administration for Korea’s present plight: In addition to dividing...