This week, I worked on learning about history in South Korea. Because Korean history was never taught in American schools, I was never knowledgeable about the history of my heritage and wanted to learn more about it. In one of the videos I saw, I learned about four significant historical figures. These historical figures all played an important part for the independence of South Korean from Japanese colonialism. The first figure was Kim Gu. Kim was a politician and a leader of the Korean Independence Movement against Japan. Kim was a major player during the Korean Independence movement and a major proponent of education for all Koreans. He was eventually forced to flee due to the Japanese government silencing all opponents through violent means. The next person I learned about was Ahn Jung Geun. Ahn was responsible for assassinating Prince Ito Hirobumi who was a proponent of Japanese expansion in the Korean territory. Ito was known to be responsible for the assassination of the Korean Empress Myeong Seong and also forced several unfair treaties onto Korea. Another was Yu Gwan Sun. Yu was educated in a women’s university at a time when it was very uncommon for women to be educated in Korea. She was heavily involved in peaceful protests against Japanese presence in Korea. At one of the demonstrations she organized, Japanese forces opened fire into the crowd of peaceful protestors and killed 19 people including both of Yu’s parents. Yu was arrested and tortured. Despite being imprisoned, she never gave up her demonstrations and was actively protesting with the other inmates. Yu eventually died due to the tortures she endured for a long time.
Learning about these Korean figures made me very proud of my heritage since their independence was hard fought. I think learning about important historical figures was a very good strategy to learn about the Korean history because learning about the heroism of these figures sparks my interest further. I eventually did more research on my own time to look into the historical background behind these protests and assassinations. There was also a long list of movies that were based on historical events that I was encouraged to watch by my Korean language partner.
Lastly, I think learning about the history between Korea and Japan is also important in the context of current events. South Korean and Japan always had a less pleasant diplomatic relationship because of the many years of colonialism. Very recently, the South Korean government declared a trade war against Japanese goods due to tension between the two countries. Since much of Korean citizens agree with the government being against trading with Japan, most of the nation has been taking strides against buying goods from Japan. Watching a news clip in Korea, I saw that Japanese merchandise are labelled as such and were left on the shelves in supermarkets. However, the news speculated that this would also harm the Korean economy due to the many Korean companies’ dependence on Japanese electrical machinery. To build on what I learned in this week’s class, I will continue to do more research on my own time about the Korean-Japanese history.
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