One year ago, after ROK President Yoon Suk-yeol radically changed his focus and outlined a policy shift embracing Japanese partnership during a speech commemorating the 104th anniversary of the March First Independence Movement against Japanese colonial rule, this author began waiting to see how this important anniversary would play out this year. His premonitions did not fail him!

The celebration itself went off without incident. As per tradition, the main festive ceremony was held at the Bosingak Pavilion in the center of the capital, where 7,500 independence fighters and their families received cash gifts from Seoul City Hall.

But we are interested in the president’s keynote speech, which was delivered on March 1 at the Yu Gwan-sun Memorial Hall in Seoul and which consisted of several topical blocks. The first was on history and began with the historian’s controversial claim that “Korea’s declaration of independence was based on liberalism, the dominant trend in world history at the time.” Yoon himself is indeed deeply immersed in Western liberal discourse, but to say such a thing about the worlds of the late 1910s–1920s seems incorrect.

In general, President Yoon has very specific ideas about how and by what means his country’s independence was achieved. Below is a great quote worth parsing:

“Inheriting the spirit of the March Independence Movement, various types of independence movements followed at home and abroad. Independence fighters engaged fiercely in armed struggle at the risk of their lives. Visionaries with insight into changing global political landscape struggled for independence through diplomacy in countries around the world. Some independence activists initiated educational and cultural movements to empower Koreans with necessary skills on their own. Following the defeat of imperialism, we were able to gain independence thanks to all these pioneering endeavors.”

However, neither the independence fighters who practiced terrorism, or at best attempted guerrilla warfare, nor those who practiced education and culture, much less those who tried to influence third countries through diplomacy, played a decisive role in liberating Korea. The Korean peninsula was liberated by the Soviet Army. But Yoon tried to obscure this point by saying that “with independence came the occupation of the northern half of our country by the forces of communist totalitarianism,” and if one follows the text literally, it is possible to get the wrong impression that first the country gained independence and then the Soviet Army seized the northern half. But, to put it mildly, this is not the case.

On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan and in six days defeated the Kwantung Army, including the Japanese forces in northern Korea. On August 11, the United States proposed the division of Korea into two occupation zones, which resulted in the Soviet Army occupying only the northern half of the peninsula and moving no further south.

American troops did not show up in Korea until three weeks later. During this time, the Japanese handed over power to the left-wing nationalists (the right-wingers were afraid) and they even managed to proclaim the so-called People’s Republic of Korea.

Yoon then makes another historical error by stating that “the blood and sweat of these independence activist enabled our country’s independence and became the foundation of the Republic of Korea.” This........

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