[Citizen College Season 2] Is the Reconciliation of Historical Perception between Korea and Japan Possible?

On October 26, 2018, the second lecture of “Citizen College Season 2: Complex conflict and reconciliation of Korean Society” was held by the Seongbuk Village Citizenship Education Center and the Korea University Peace and Democracy Institute(PDI). The second speaker was Professor Park, Hong-Kyu, the Director of PDI.

In this lecture titled “Is the Reconciliation of Historical Perception between Korea and Japan Possible”, the professor and participants discussed how to approach the issue of Korean-Japanese history and how to break through it. Historical problems in Korea and Japan can be searched by sowing, germination, flowering and fertilization period. Those of them, the flowering period is the thing to focus on, since human rights were emphasized by the result of domestic democratization and post-cold war at that time. Korea was active, Japan was passive, and the gap was widening between the two countries. Of course, in 1998, the ‘Kim-Obuchi Declaration’ agreed on mutual recognition of historical facts and a future-oriented relationship. However, failing to follow-up collapsed to reduce the cognitive gap between the two countries, and the gap has been maintained or strengthened. In order to solve this problem, the professor emphasized the need to relate (objectify) the historical problems. The problem of history, which is the realm of history itself, and the problem of history, which is the domain of perception and emotion, is different, so we have to differentiate them and approach from the different standards. (Theorem: Eun-Bi Lee)