Courtesy of CottonBro Studio

David A. Tizzard

The past is a foreign country. Never is this more obvious when you speak to young Korean people today. They know everything that has happened around the world (or at least on Insta) in the last 24 hours but very little of what took place a few decades ago.

“We should be proud of what our ancestors did to bring us democracy,” said one student to me completely matter-of-factly. I was taken aback. Ancestors! To me, the word conjures up images of Neanderthals and other archaic humans fighting over bones and power. To my student, it was badly-dressed people of the 1980s fighting over the same thing. So actually maybe our views weren’t that different after all. But if they were ancestors to her, what did that make me?

And then we sat at a late night pub discussing history and politics. A question haunted me and a friend as we had both recently read a provocative book which suggested few, if any, Koreans knew the actual date on which the Republic of Korea (South Korea) began. A ludicrous suggestion, surely? The Koreans are a proud and patriotic people. They would have at least the dates right even if they were not too sure of the nuances and complexities of history. But no. The PhD candidate and the undergraduate both hemmed and hawed. Eventually the former, perhaps pressured by her position of seniority, suggested an answer: “Well maybe it must have been in the 1930s.”

My friend and I looked at each other. The book was right. Go a few years back and everything disappears into a mist. Dates, events, and people become ambiguous and vague. Sometimes emotions are given rise to by picture-perfect actors on cinema screens, presenting a brilliant view of good eventually triumphing over evil which stays in people’s hearts. But the movies offer no dates, no complexities, and no requirement to know anything over than........

© The Korea Times