preface

Part 1: The Roots of Civil War

01 A letter to President Kim Dae-jung
02 Historical Roots and Progress of Anti-Japanese Race

Part 2: The Front Lines of Civil War

03 The nationality of Koreans under Japanese colonial rule was Korean?
04 Is the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty invalid from the beginning?
05 Transmission and Confusion of the Memory of the Founding of the Nation
06 What is the legitimacy of the provisional government?
07 The Truth About the Anti-Japanese Independence Movement of the Neo-Confucian Scholars
08 The Dark History of Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle
09 The Moon Jae-in administration's historical civil war
10 The Comfort Women Fraud and the Responsibility of the Chosun Ilbo, Dong-A Ilbo, and JoongAng Ilbo
11. Anti-Japanese historical riots surrounding the designation of the Sado Mine as a World Heritage Site

Part 3: The Direction of the Civil War

12 Command Center of the Civil War in History: Korean History and Education
13 To the People Power Party: You idiot, the problem is history!
14 The national illusion awakened by Kim Jong-un

Epilogue: "The country is floating on lies told with rubbing shoulders."

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The Roots of the Successive Impeachment and Civil War

In the past decade, Koreans have experienced two civil wars.
During that period, the two right-wing regimes collapsed or are on the verge of collapse before completing their terms.
The Park Geun-hye administration, which came to power in 2013, collapsed in its fourth year, and the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, which came to power in 2022, is also facing a crisis of collapse in just its third year.
The Park Geun-hye administration was helpless against the leftist witch hunt instigation, and the Yoon Seok-yeol administration was hastily confronted with the Democratic Party of Korea's attempts to neutralize the government, which controlled the National Assembly.
Meanwhile, the leftist Moon Jae-in administration completed its term without any crisis despite all the chaos in state affairs.

In recent years, the power gap between the left and right in Korea has shown such a severe asymmetry.
This means that the era of leftist hegemony has arrived in Korea.
While the right-wing government, which came to power with difficulty, immediately fell into crisis, the left-wing government went on smoothly.
The judicial process for Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, who was brought to trial on multiple criminal charges, continues endlessly, but President Yoon Seok-yeol, who immediately lifted martial law in accordance with a National Assembly resolution, was soon arrested and indicted.
In Korea, the left, which has established a stronghold in every sector of society, including education, culture, and the media, has taken control of state institutions such as the National Assembly, police, prosecution, courts, and the Constitutional Court.

But before this leftist hegemony, there was a historical overthrow of popular nationalism.
Minjung Minjok history holds that Korea has been ruled by comprador forces in collusion with foreign powers, and that in modern Korean history, justice has been defeated and opportunism has gained ground.
South Korea's brilliant achievement of transitioning from a developing country to a developed one in just two generations is completely ignored.
Over the past several decades, this historical perspective has been instilled in the minds of many Koreans through school education and numerous historical contents, and this has greatly contributed to the left's rise to power.


Minjung Minjok history originated from anti-Japanese tribal culture.

Minjung Minjok Sahak believes that the most pressing challenges facing Korea today are the realization of true democracy and the independent unification of the country.
True democracy is people's democracy.
And independent unification is unification that does not deny the North Korean system.
The darling of this era is the democratization and autonomy movement to achieve this goal, and history is said to be a tool serving this democratization and autonomy movement.
According to this view, modern Korean history is the history of the people's anti-Japanese independence movement against the oppression and exploitation of the most brutal imperialism, Japanese imperialism, and modern Korean history after 1945 is the history of the anti-fascist democratization movement against the rule of the divisionist forces of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee who collaborated with foreign powers, and the history of the independence movement to expel the United States and Japan, which were obstacles to the unification of North and South Korea.


Minjung nationalist historians even fabricate facts that do not exist in accordance with this worldview.
For example, they believe, without any basis in fact, that Japan exploited Korea's land, rice, and goods, and even exploited its labor and women's sex.
They completely ignore the fact that the liberal democratic market economy has brought about the prosperity of South Korea today, and that Presidents Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee fought tirelessly to achieve it.
They criticize that pro-Japanese forces founded the Republic of Korea by inciting unconditional hatred toward Japan in order to destroy the ROK-US-Japan alliance cooperation system, similar to Kim Il-sung's story of kicking out Japan (if Korea kicks out Japan, the US will also fall).

They brazenly spread baseless lies in the name of history, and they hate neighboring countries with whom they once had a grudge and those who think differently from them as mortal enemies.
At its foundation are the Joseon ethnic culture, including factional strife that overthrew opponents through false accusations, false accusations, and conspiracies, and the hatred that descendants must take revenge on even the enemies of their ancestors from long ago.
In this respect, it can be said that the history of the people's nation originated from anti-Japanese racial culture.

Kim Dae-jung's dark shadow

Kim Dae-jung is the giant who casts the biggest shadow over current Korean politics.
If Kim Gu is a man who rules Korea only after death, then he can be said to be a man who rules Korea even after death.
He was a democracy activist who was severely oppressed by the dictators Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a peace and unification activist who brought about the first inter-Korean summit.
He shines brightly as a symbol of Korean democracy, human rights, and reconciliation between North and South Korea.
But he is also a figure in the darkest of all.
He fiercely opposed Park Chung-hee's economic development plan, which elevated South Korea to the ranks of advanced nations, yet he never reflected on it. He proposed an impossible three-stage plan for unification between North and South Korea, and by sending a large sum of money in exchange for the inter-Korean summit, he ultimately supported North Korea's nuclear development.
He is a powerful figure who has hidden a huge amount of slush funds in American banks and yet no one can touch him. He is also the one who has benefited the most from the ignition of latent regionalism and has thus passed on a huge burden to future generations.
Above all, he is the person who created a great stir in the burgeoning popular consciousness in the Korean historical and literary world and fostered it into a powerful intellectual trend.
In that he put forward the popular, national, and democratic forces that led the Donghak Peasant Revolution, the March 1st Movement, the April 19th Revolution, and the May 18th Democratic Uprising as the main actors of Korean history, he is a pioneer of popular nationalism and anti-Japanese tribalism, and in other words, a pioneer of historical civil war.

The front lines of the civil war in history

(1) The theory that the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty is null and void = the theory that colonial rule is illegal

The Treaty on Basic Relations between Korea and Japan concluded in 1965 stipulated that all treaties concluded between Korea and Japan before 1910 were already null and void. Later, the Korean government, some Korean historians, and international law scholars began to argue that this provision meant that the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty was fundamentally null and void, and therefore Japan's colonial rule was illegal.
Based on this, the Korean court ruled that the mobilization of labor and comfort women during the late Japanese colonial period was illegal and ordered Japanese companies and the government to pay compensation for the damages, putting Korea-Japan relations in crisis.

Those who argue that the annexation treaty is invalid cite the coercive nature and procedural flaws in the treaty-making process as their reasons, but the original invalidity of a treaty between countries is determined by the great powers at the time and the international community.
Throughout the 20th century, no major power ruled the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty invalid.


If the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty is null and void, then Korea was not annexed by Japan, and the nationality of Koreans under Japanese rule remains Korean.
The Democratic Party lawmakers must have felt good about shouting at Minister Kim Moon-soo in the National Assembly, “How could my parents have been Japanese citizens?” But they seem unaware that if Japanese rule during that era was invalid, all records of Koreans’ births, marriages, deaths, school admissions and graduations, employment, real estate registrations, etc. at that time were also invalid.
Insisting that something that happened never happened signifies the breakdown of reason in a society.

(2) 1948 Negation

Anti-Japanese groups do not commemorate the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948.
The independence movement ended with the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948, but they mistakenly believe that the independence movement ended with the liberation in 1945.
They are hostile to Syngman Rhee for founding the Republic of Korea and for making it into the advanced country it is today.
So they argue for the 1919 founding theory.
Strangely enough, they commemorate the provisional government of 1919 but not the formal government of 1948.

The government celebrated the first anniversary of independence on August 15, 1949.
This independence is the founding of the nation.
After that, the 10th anniversary of the founding of the country was celebrated in 1958, and the 20th anniversary of the founding of the country was celebrated in 1968.
In 1998, there was an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Republic of Korea.
Until then, there was no denial of the founding of the nation in 1948, but from the 2000s onwards, denial of the founding of the nation in 1948 began.
This is because anti-Japanese racism was established around that time.

The current Constitution states that the Republic of Korea inherited the legal traditions of the Provisional Government, but this was brought about by the machinations of some Provisional Government officials during the 1987 constitutional revision.
Some in the Korean history community believe that Kim Gu's non-participation in the founding of the Republic of Korea makes it appear as if the Provisional Government and the current Republic of Korea are unrelated, but this is also a short-sighted view.
The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Korea states that, at Syngman Rhee's insistence, the Republic of Korea was rebuilt in 1919 "by inheriting the great spirit of independence that was proclaimed to the world through the March 1st Movement, which established the Republic of Korea."
The legitimacy of the Republic of Korea lies in the spirit of independence proclaimed through the March 1st Movement, not in the provisional government.


(3) The claim that all resistance against Japan was an independence movement.

· The Korean historical academia and government veterans' affairs authorities also praise Neo-Confucian scholars such as Choi Ik-hyeon and Yu In-seok, who raised anti-Japanese militias in the late Joseon Dynasty, as independence activists.
They all received the Order of Merit for National Foundation.
However, the reason they resisted Japan was to maintain the 'small China' order.
They did not tolerate the commoners opposing the nobles within the volunteer army, and when their father passed away, they returned to their hometown to mourn for three years, and the volunteer army was disbanded.
It is necessary to distinguish between the anti-Japanese movement that sought to restore the order of Neo-Confucianism and the independence movement that sought to establish a modern nation with freedom, human rights, and the rule of law.


· Furthermore, Korean history academia and veterans' affairs authorities praise the struggles of small-scale independence army units in Manchuria and Gando across the Tumen River after the fall of the country in 1910, in which they clashed with the Japanese military several times, as anti-Japanese armed struggles, and laud them as a direct lineage of the independence movement.
In particular, the military clashes that took place in Bongodong and Cheongsanri are even described as great victories.
However, the results of the battle were exaggerated, and the independent army units, including these, were either massacred or eventually disbanded during the forced disarmament process by the Soviet Russian government.
Korea's independence came from the Cairo Declaration, not from an anti-Japanese armed struggle or a righteous struggle.
The anti-Japanese armed struggle must be given its due recognition.


· The Moon Jae-in administration also attempted to change the identity of the national defense force.
The Moon Jae-in administration attempted to install a large number of busts of Korean independence fighters and independence activists at the Korea Military Academy, using the Shinheung Military Academy as its foundation, and even changed Armed Forces Day (October 1) to the Korean Liberation Army's founding anniversary (September 17).
President Moon called Kim Won-bong, who defected to North Korea after liberation and became a member of the North Korean cabinet, the root of the ROK Armed Forces. When it was not possible to award a medal to Kim Won-bong, he brought back the remains of Hong Beom-do, buried him in the National Cemetery, and awarded him the 1st Class Order of Merit for National Foundation.
This was a historical civil war that aimed to destroy the identity of the ROK Army, which defended the Republic of Korea and prevented North Korea's invasion.

(4) Issues of past history with Japan

· The issue of Japanese military comfort women, which had pushed Korea-Japan relations into crisis, has now entered the resolution phase.
There was also an agreement between the Korean and Japanese governments on comfort women in 2015, and in 2020, former Jeong Ui-yeon's embezzlement and other wrongdoings were exposed and she was found guilty. Furthermore, based on data unearthed and accumulated by comfort women activists, it was revealed that the widely held theory of forced recruitment and sexual slavery was completely baseless.
In retrospect, the comfort women movement was an international fraud, and now it is necessary to reveal how such a fraud was perpetrated.


Korean media outlets such as Chosun Ilbo, Donga Ilbo, and JoongAng Ilbo played a role in this comfort women fraud.
The Korean media widely spread the story that Japanese officials had forcibly taken away Korean girls, including girls in their early teens, as if they were slaves, and persecuted those who criticized them.
The role of Cho, Dong, and Jung, who amplified and spread provocative issues without any interest in fact-finding, was crucial in causing the comfort women issue to run wild for so long.
Cho, Dong, and Jung must reflect on this dark history.

· Japan's Sado Mine has been a world-class gold mine since the Edo period.
When the Japanese government pushed for the mine to be registered as a World Cultural Heritage site in 2018, the Moon Jae-in administration and anti-Japanese forces in South Korea opposed the registration, claiming that Korean laborers had been forcibly mobilized to work in the mine during the late Japanese colonial period, and insisted that the forced mobilization and overwork of Koreans should be recorded when the mine was registered.
Following UNESCO's recommendations, the Japanese government exhibited information related to Korean laborers at the Sado Mine Memorial Facility.
However, the Korean left and media protested, saying that there was no apology for the forced drafting and slave labor of Koreans, and even refused to attend the joint memorial service held locally in November 2024, continuing the disturbance even against foreign museums.

The Korean history academia, the center of historical civil war

The Korean history academia and history education community are obsessed with anti-Japanese sentiment.
The Japanese colonial period, which lasted only 35 years, accounts for 20-23% of Korean history textbooks, and Japan-related questions account for 35% of the Korean history exam for the college entrance exam.
The description of Japan's exploitation in that textbook is completely false, and the same goes for the description of the history of the independence movement.
The Korean historical academia ignored the diplomatic and capacity-building movements directly related to the Republic of Korea and blamed Syngman Rhee for the division.


The mainstream Korean history circles do not actually hold Kim Gu's provisional government in high regard, but they have promoted Kim Gu as a rival to Syngman Rhee.
The Moon Jae-in administration's 2019 project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the March 1st Movement and the Provisional Government was at its peak, but it was halted due to North Korea's opposition after talking about the "100th anniversary of the founding of the nation."
The Korean history community, which was contracted by the government to carry out this 100th anniversary commemorative project, came out and denigrated the provisional government as soon as the event was over.
What should we do with this academic world that is trying to overturn history and overturn the country?

The People Power Party, which does not understand the importance of history

Most current Democratic Party members are holders of the popular nationalist view of history, have a keen interest in history, and whenever a historical issue arises, they all become fighters.
On the other hand, the People Power Party members are ignorant and have no interest in history.
They usually follow the Democratic Party on historical issues.
The so-called right-wing party has no historical perspective of its own.
Whenever the time comes, People Power Party politicians go to the May 18th Cemetery, prostrate themselves, apologize, and agree with the Democratic Party's claim to include the May 18th spirit in the Constitution.
They may not realize that it is a permanent loss of political hegemony.

The political parties have different ideologies.
Historical awareness is very important in forming the ideology and identity of supporters of each political party.
The left, which has firmly established itself in the Korean history academia, history education, cultural circles, and media, produces and distributes a wealth of content about historical narratives interpreted through popular nationalism, that is, narratives about the people's nation. On the other hand, the right lacks the ability to create and disseminate content about narratives about nation-building, national defense, and national enrichment to the public.
While the Democratic Party has solidified its majority supporters with a popular nationalist historical narrative, the People Power Party, with its unclear identity and lack of a compelling narrative, has struggled to attract supporters.
People Power Party, you idiot, what matters is history!

We must break free from national illusions.

In late 2023, North Korea's Kim Jong-un declared that inter-Korean relations were not those of compatriots, but of two hostile belligerent states.
North Koreans already perceived South Korea as a nation with the same superficiality.
On the other hand, South Koreans still perceive North Korea as their own people.
Since President Roh Tae-woo, successive governments have put forward plans to resolve hostilities and move toward unification through dialogue, exchange, and support between the South and the North.
But they were all fiction.
In traditional Joseon society, there was no civil society separate from the state, that is, no associations or professional organizations other than the kinship community.
When a mass society of atomized individuals was placed under communist totalitarianism, there was no way for that society to change through interaction with a liberal democratic society.
This was different from the liberalization of East Germany, where civil society, including the long-standing Christian church, remained.
Syngman Rhee advocated the theory of unification through northward advance to liberate the people from the North Korean communist group. Following his example, we must resolve to bring down the evil regime at any cost, as it will not collapse on its own.
It would be fortunate if Kim Jong-un's declaration at the end of 2023 serves as a catalyst for Koreans to shatter their national illusions.