This book, which is set primarily in the colonial imperial period from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, “a time when worlds that had been divided for a long time became deeply intertwined” and “the most recent past that shaped the world we live in now,” is a liberal arts history book that crosses the continents, horizontally connecting contemporary figures interacting with each other, and vertically traversing the legacy of the time’s thought systems, perceptions, and sensibilities that continue to this day.

In the midst of the turbulent history that continues from the Paris Commune, Russo-Japanese War, Boxer Rebellion, World War I, March 1st Movement, First Shanghai Incident, Berlin Olympics, Second Sino-Japanese War, and World War II, politicians and soldiers, entertainers and writers, scientists and intellectuals, women who sell sex and women's rights activists, independence activists and spies, and ordinary people appear.
Many of the novels, movies, and songs they enjoyed are also cited.
All of these things unfold like a drama, a story of “being caught up in history, making history, and eventually becoming history.”

This book, which understands the essence of history as connection and involvement, focuses on the minds and attitudes of individuals as they move and react, rather than the familiar historical narratives of nations and ethnic groups, summarized as good and evil, victory and defeat, harm and harm.
It portrays the dynamics of characters who love, make mistakes, dream, and desire, meeting, becoming entangled with each other, and giving and receiving.
In the process, we examine the historical responsibility they must bear, the responsibility history must bear to them, and further, the responsibility we, as involved parties, must bear now.

The true history of 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' asks us to reconsider our conventional perceptions of history.
What kind of perception is this? It's the perception that history flows through nations and ethnic groups, and that there are clear perpetrators and victims.
Real history often crosses boundaries, creates boundaries, and changes them.
The actual history of the Bridge on the River Kwai is also a 'disjointed common history' involving Britain, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Myanmar.

--- p.9~10

Li Xianglan, a Japanese national who was popular on the Korean Peninsula under the name of Lee Hyangran, became deeply involved in the comfort women issue in the 1990s.
How should we view her apology? The scene of Son Ki-chung winning the marathon, which almost every Korean has seen, is a highlight of Riefenstahl's masterpiece, [Olympia].
Riefenstahl, who had been criticized for her Nazi ties, regained fame by capturing the disappearing indigenous people of Africa in her photographs.
How should we interpret her fame? Marlene Dietrich, Riefenstahl's rival in Germany, rose through the Hollywood star system and became a global darling, including in Korea, on the big screen.
She was the original 'Shanghai Lil', a Western man's fantasy of Eastern women, and fought against the Nazis.
What kind of person is she?
--- p.10~11

What kind of people were the prison guards? They were always under surveillance to make sure they were keeping a good watch.
I always got hit because I was told to hit hard.
Pierre Boulle writes in The Bridge on the River Kwai:
“Colonel Nicholson was beaten again, and the gorilla-like Korean was ordered to resume the harsh regime of the first few days.
Saito even hit the guard.
He threatened to use his pistol not only on the prisoners but also on the guards.” They were both the perpetrator and the victim.
He was a victim of overlapping fates.
Aiko Utsumi, a Japanese sociologist who studied the tragedy of Korean Class B and C war criminals, says that while there was some personal abuse by prison guards, the very situation in which they had no choice but to abuse prisoners due to lack of food and medicine should be addressed.
--- p.60~61

The Korean prisoner-of-war guards were perpetrators who collaborated with the Japanese in their war efforts.
Based on these cases, some people claim that Korea, like Japan, is a war criminal nation.
The practical implication is that Japan cannot be held responsible for the war, as it is a fellow war criminal country that sided with Japan.
It is just one of the arguments that agree with the logic of denying responsibility for the war.
On the other hand, there is the idea that they were simply victims, having been taken by force.
If there is structural evil, can the ethical responsibility of individuals who participate in it be simply absolved? As Lee Hak-rae confesses in his memoir, that's not the case.
We must recognize our share of historical responsibility without identifying with Japan.
Only then can one become an ethical subject.

--- p.62~63

There is also a much more trivial story.
In his memoirs, British prisoner Urquhart recalls the harrowing experience of being transported on a train like a piece of luggage, in fear of suffocation.
One day, while being transported, the prisoners begged the Korean guards not to close the door, saying that they would not escape and that they would close the door when they arrived.
Surprisingly, he didn't close the door.
“A pleasant breeze blew as we moved.
…I could never forget that the guards had allowed me to leave the door open, nor could I forget the first kindness and sympathy I received from one of them.”

No one escaped.
Rather than escaping, he repaid the kindness of the Korean prisoner guards by closing the door upon arrival, thus avoiding suspicion.
There were those who risked their lives to do small favors.
One wonders what meaning such a small favor can have in the face of such a terrible tragedy.
However, Aquatt remembered this and recorded it.
So we found out.
Could hope perhaps be found here?
--- p.65~66

Yun Chi-ho (1865-1945) also accepted social Darwinism while studying in the United States.
After experiencing racial discrimination, they come to accept the social Darwinism argument that 'might makes right'.
Of course, Yun Chi-ho was a more complex person than Yu Gil-jun.
He was particularly troubled by the dissonance between Christian faith and social Darwinism.
In his diary from one day in 1892, he agonizes:
“The greatest obstacle to my faith and belief is racial inequality and the many harms it causes.
Why didn't God grant equal opportunity and equal physical and mental abilities to Caucasians, Mongolians, Africans, and others? … Couldn't God have done so, even though He wanted to? What then is His wisdom? Couldn't He have done so, yet deliberately avoided it? What then is His love? Oh, the riddle!
--- p.93

The reality that Lee Soon-tak encountered upon returning from his world tour was different from the reality that Na Hye-seok and Park In-deok encountered upon returning.
For the intellectual elite male, traveling the world was not a life-changing adventure.
However, that doesn't mean the reality was rosy.
In April 1938, Lee Soon-tak was arrested along with professors Baek Nam-un and No Dong-gyu of the same department and students, accused of being the mastermind behind the 'Yeonhui College Economic Research Society Incident'.
He was sentenced to prison and served his sentence until July 1940.
Even after being released from prison, he was unable to return to work.
However, thanks to the school's consideration, he served as the head of the accounting department at Severance Hospital until liberation.
After the government was established, he participated as the first director of the planning department and worked hard to prepare a land reform plan.
There are clear traces of contributions from centrist leftists, such as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Cho Bong-am and Director of Planning Lee Soon-tak, in South Korea's land reform.
He was abducted during the Korean War and his life or death was unknown until he was later found dead in October 1950.
--- p.114~115

Just as the hierarchy of power and cultural imagination between Korea, Japan, and the United States was stark, so too was the hierarchy of sexual fantasies.
While men from victorious nations dreamed of casual romances with women from conquered lands, men from defeated, weak nations trembled with shame, regret, and sometimes even anger.

--- p.125

It was a period that British historian Eric Hobsbawm called the Age of Empire (1875-1914).
The expansionist competition among the great powers was evolving beyond the long-distance trade and resource plunder of the early colonial period to include large-scale migration and capital export.
Ideologies, cultural imaginations, and works that fuel and justify the West's desire for expansion have emerged one after another.
Only the West could have the authority to define and express the non-West, the Orient.
All the discourses, knowledge, and cultural representations that described and analyzed the Orient through Western eyes eventually transformed into a style that dominated, reconstructed, oppressed, and disciplined the Orient.
It was an era when Western cultural hegemony reached its peak, a period captured by Palestinian-born English literature scholar Edward Said under the name of 'Orientalism.'
[Madame Butterfly] can be said to be a typical example of an Orientalist cultural product.
--- p.134

When criticized for developing poison gas, Haber protested.
“In times of peace, a scientist belongs to the world, but in times of war, he belongs to his country.” He was so patriotic towards Germany that he risked the destruction of his family, but he had to go into exile when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
Because he was Jewish.
After traveling to several countries, he died in Switzerland the following year.
Zyklon B, an insecticide developed by Haber, was widely used in the massacre of Jews during World War II.
It was a horrific poison gas that did not kill instantly, but caused a slow and painful death.
Could he have imagined this tragedy? His eldest son, Hermann, fled to the United States via France, where he committed suicide in 1946.
Hermann's daughter Claire grew up in the United States as a chemist.
While he was working on developing an antidote to chlorine gas created by his grandfather, he committed suicide when he heard that the research budget was being prioritized for the development of nuclear bombs.
It was 1949.
It is unclear whether science saved the world.
It is clear that we failed to save the scientist who said he would save the world.
--- p.157~158

Lee Gwang-su's interest in science did not last long.
Instead, in the 1930s, he was immersed in totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism and fascism.
Excerpts from Hitler's Mein Kampf were translated in 1930, before the Nazis came to power.
It was he who coined and spread the word totalitarianism.
Although science has become totalitarian, there are still enduring interests within it.
It is the ‘worship of power.’
Let's look back.
In the final scene of "Heartless," what did he vow just before he cried out, "Science! Science!"? "I must give them strength.
I must impart knowledge.
So, we must secure the foundation of our lives.” It was not difficult for the yearning for a power that could help the world to change into a worship of a power that could rule the world.

--- p.161

Around 1936, while Marlene Dietrich was working in the United States and staying in London to film a movie, she was approached by the Nazis.
He requested to return to Germany with the promise of the best treatment.
In fact, Dietrich was Hitler's favorite actor.
She declined the offer and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1937.
In the same year, he donated $450,000 from his appearance fee for [The Knight Without Armor] to a fund to help Jews escape from Germany.
When the war broke out, he took the lead in selling national bonds to raise war funds, and traveled to battlefields to perform and visit hospitals.
While Riefenstahl made films for the Nazis, Dietrich stood up to them.
After the war, he was condemned as a traitor in Germany.
He was unable to reconcile with Germany during his lifetime.
He left a will asking to be buried in Paris, not in Germany or the United States.
In 2002, ten years after Dietrich's death, the German government posthumously made her an honorary citizen of Germany and named a square in her hometown after her.
The cemetery in Paris was also moved.

--- p.253~254