Vindication for teacher who convinced students to speak out against sexual harassment, then reported her school when it violated their rights and was transferred as punishment

The story below is infuriating but predictable in many ways, unfortunately. I first learned of it by reading this article:

The Seoul Administrative Court erupted in applause Thursday after a judge ruled in favor of teacher Ji Hye-bok, nullifying a transfer order issued by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s Jungbu District Office and reinstating her as an instructor.

Ji played a crucial role in publicizing mass sexual violence and harassment against the majority female students at her school in 2023, for which male students were held responsible. She applied for relief from a violation of student rights with the Seoul education office, and the following investigation led to written apologies from the perpetrating students.

However, the education office subsequently issued a transfer order for Ji in December 2023, effective from March 2024, citing the need to reduce teaching staff due to a declining student population. Ji argued that the move was retaliation for her whistleblowing and, from January 2024, staged a one-person protest in front of the Seoul education office.

She was later dismissed from her post in September 2024 for taking multiple unauthorized absences.

The court ruled Thursday that “Ji’s complaint constitutes public-interest whistleblowing.” [...] 

Ji’s attorney said that if the education office does not appeal, the ruling will be finalized and Ji will be able to return to her school; the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education confirmed Friday that it would not appeal the court’s decision.

That second paragraph is so convoluted and murky that I was curious to dig around and find more information about what happened. As it turns out, while what the boys did was nowhere near as horrible as what happened in Miryang in 2005, these cases are similar in that the identities of the students who spoke out were made known to their harassers, which led to them being re-targeted. The actions of the school administration are pretty unbelievable, but, perhaps, predictable considering the collision of enduring attitudes and the perceived need to protect "the school's reputation," along with the those of the administrators. Below is a video from May 22, 2024 featuring an interview with Ji Hye-bok, followed by a translation of the transcript (done with AI and quite a bit of editing based on the video's embedded subtitles; sentences in quotation marks are statements by Ji unless otherwise stated):

For several months now, there has been a teacher holding a one-person protest in front of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. What could have driven a veteran teacher with over 30 years of experience to stand in the street holding a placard?

“My total teaching career spans a little over 30 years. I worked for four years at the school I most wish I could return to, and up until now I have continued working as a social studies teacher [at the school I have been transferred to].”

[Note that public school teachers typically spend five years at a school before being transferred to a new school; she therefore had one more year to go at the school where she was a whistleblower.]

Last spring [2023], through conversations with her students, she came to learn that sexual violence against female students had been occurring at the school for a long time, repeatedly and continuously. 

“I first heard about it in late May of last year while counseling female students. It was not a one-time incident. From their first year through their second year—over the course of two years—there were numerous cases of persistent and repeated sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.”

[A supporter speaking at a protest]: “‘Why did you take off your mask? You’re ugly. Put your mask back on.’ ‘Your breasts are big.’ ‘Your face is ugly.’”

“Do you consider this to be words exchanged jokingly among close students? Absolutely not. This was something a male student said to a female student with whom he was not even particularly close. That female student was absent from school for several days afterward.”

— Statement from a parent (Issued April 2, 2024)

Even prior to this, some male students had directed remarks toward female students such as comments about whether their breasts were large or small, saying their faces were ugly, whispering in their ears that they wanted to have sex, and even asking a temporary (contract) teacher whether she had sex with her boyfriend, or saying that her teeth were yellow and asking whether she smoked—all of which constitute sexually harassing and sexually violent remarks.

Support for the Struggle Against an Unjust Transfer
— Statement from a parent (Issued April 2, 2024)

[A supporter speaking at the protest]: “Because it was difficult to identify specific individuals, these were incidents that were sometimes covered up and passed over, that did not surface publicly, and for which no special measures were taken.”

“I asked other teachers for help and also went to the student guidance department, but most cases were handled with verbal warnings only. Because the issues were not properly resolved, the students’ behavior continued. That was the result.”

“When I first heard the students’ stories, I immediately told them how sorry I was. As a teacher, I was deeply sorry that for two years I had not fully known what was happening and that I had not stepped up more actively to resolve it. I told them, ‘I’m truly sorry. But from now on, let’s work together to try to resolve this.’”

“After that, I made an initial report together with the principal and vice principal. Then we discussed how to proceed. Under a teacher’s duty, once such a matter is learned of, it must be reported within 48 hours. But to report it properly, we needed to understand exactly what was happening and how to describe it.”

“So we conducted an anonymous survey of female students. They were told to write exactly what had happened, including incidents they had heard about. According to the results, about three quarters of the female students had experienced sexual harassment or non-consensual touching over a two-year period. We judged the matter to be serious, and the principal and vice principal decided to compile the report quickly and file it.”

The teacher moved forward in order to resolve a sexual violence problem that had been occurring routinely over a long period of time. However, during the investigation process, the identities of the victimized students were exposed, and the teacher in charge arbitrarily downplayed the case. After the school violence report was filed, even more problems arose.

The investigation process was conducted in a way that seriously violated students’ human rights. Because the initial reporting, which took the form of a brief survey, was anonymous, the names of the students who reported could not be included. As a result, the teacher who was in charge of the investigation at the time said that reports had to be submitted with the student’s name clearly written and limited to a description only of what they themselves had experienced. If you look at the Ministry of Education’s sexual violence manual, eyewitness accounts are also considered important evidence. This is also true more broadly in society, because when cases of sexual violence occur, eyewitness testimony is always included. I think that, at that first stage, the case was already being minimized.”

“As a result, about six students—those who were more courageous and who had long recognized the seriousness of the situation—expressed their intention to report. At first, their confident expressions and attitudes—saying, ‘I’ll do it’—moved me deeply. Seeing second-year middle school students take such an active, self-directed stance toward resolving the problem gave me hope. I felt proud, thinking that if these students grew up with this mindset, many problems in society could gradually be resolved.”

“So, the students wrote factual statements together, and I collected what was written and submitted to the vice principal, who was the chair of the school violence committee. I submitted the six students’ factual statements, the parents’ confirmation letters, and requests for separation measures that three students had asked for. This was around June 13.”

“From that point, I felt a sense of relief. After the School MeToo movement, I believed that our society had put in place fairly concrete and relatively thorough measures for responding to cases of sexual violence when they occur in schools. And because the school principal, the vice principal, and the teacher who was responsible for the investigation within the school violence committee all promised that they would handle the subsequent process properly, I trusted them and had expectations going forward.”

“At that time, the principal told me that from this point on, the school violence committee would take over and that I should completely step away from the matter. I said I would do so, except for one thing:  ‘The identities of the victimized students who made reports must be strictly protected,’ and ‘Secondary harm must not occur.’ But then the school violence committee said they would investigate the victim students. And not only that—they said the investigation would be conducted publicly, by calling them into the Student Guidance Department. I told them that this could not be done because there was a risk that the students’ identities would be exposed. Then the teacher in charge of the investigation said, ‘The students identified as perpetrators could be unfairly harmed. We need to call them in and investigate to verify the facts,’ and ‘I looked at the fact-checking statements the students wrote, and stalking is not sexual violence.’”

“So I said, ‘This is extremely dangerous. We must not make such judgments lightly.’ If the students were called publicly to the Student Guidance Department, there was a real possibility that their identities would be exposed, so I said, ‘I am absolutely opposed to calling the students to the Student Guidance Department.’ It was an open space where many students and teachers pass through. If interviews were conducted there, exposure would be inevitable.”

After that, Ji Hye-bok sought advice from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s Gender Equality Team, the Jungbu District Office Integrated Support Center, and the school violence supervising officer. 

“I was advised that the school should submit the students’ original factual statements as is—without alteration—to the district office, where professionals on the review committee would determine the facts. Victims, alleged perpetrators, and parents would all have opportunities to testify there. The school should not make arbitrary judgments. I was also told repeatedly that protecting the identities of victimized students must be the top priority throughout the investigation. I conveyed all of this—three times—to the principal, vice principal, and the investigating teacher.”

Nevertheless, identity exposure and secondary victimization occurred almost immediately.

“On the very day the statements were submitted, three female students—two who knew the details very well and one student who had made a report—ran to me in shock. Near the school, there is a small park. They said that a student accused as a perpetrator had gone to the student guidance office and came out knowing exactly who reported whom and what had been written. That student then verbally attacked and insulted the reporting student in front of others. When the three girls passed by, they too were pulled in and subjected to an angry outburst. The students asked me, "How could a teacher in charge, in the Student Guidance Department, disclose things like that at all?"

[Interviewer]: “From their perspective, they had written and submitted their own experiences, only to have their identities exposed immediately.” 

“That's right. That same evening, Instagram posts targeting the students began appearing. The next morning, many male students gathered in the hallways, went to the classrooms where reporting students were concentrated, kicked desks, and kicked chairs during lunch. They mocked the situation, saying things like, ‘Is this sexual harassment too?’”

“It became painfully clear that students had not received proper sexual violence prevention education. They did not even understand why what they said could constitute sexual harassment. “So the students who had been identified as perpetrators were full of anger. According to testimony given by parents just beforehand, there were students who went around classroom to classroom dragging a box cutter and saying, ‘Just try writing my name.’ I only heard about that later, but at the point when the statements of fact were being written, the names of the students who had made those threats were all left out. And because they were told, ‘Only write what you personally experienced,’ eyewitness accounts were also excluded, so the case had already been significantly scaled down during that process.”

“On top of that, secondary victimization became extremely severe. On the day in question, the entire corridor where the second-year classrooms were was filled every break time with male students gathering separately, forming what they called a ‘task force,’ meeting in the stands on the school playground and chanting together. Female students kept coming to me during every break, saying, ‘Teacher, what should we do…,’ telling me they were terrified.”

“What was happening did not resemble the step-by-step procedures laid out in the manuals that were supposedly in place; instead, it was unfolding in the most serious and alarming direction I had feared. Eventually, about three times, all of the victimized students were called to the Student Guidance Department. According to the reporting victims, when they were called, they didn’t go at first. In the students’ own words, they were ‘too scared.’ Because they didn’t go, the teacher in charge of the school violence investigation came to them during class time. Then, in front of other students, that teacher called out the three reporting victims and said things like, ‘Why aren’t you coming?’ Forced by the situation, they went.”

“Their interviews were recorded. The teacher told them the recording was necessary because they might face disadvantages. According to the Ministry of Education’s manual, when victimized students are questioned, a parent or legal guardian must be present to prevent fear or distress. None of this was followed.”

“I only learned later—after the investigation was over—how severe the human rights violations had been. When I met the students again after school, I felt overwhelming anger. Despite repeatedly emphasizing that protecting students’ rights was the most important thing, procedures had been carried out in reverse. I could not accept what appeared to be attempts to minimize or conceal the issue. Parents were furious as well, and complaints were filed to prevent such violations from happening again.”

Ji Hye-bok reported the human rights violations in the school’s internal investigation to higher authorities, including the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and the Jungbu District Office.

“I received a call from the head of the Jungbu District Office in charge of school violence. He was shocked. ‘How could this situation be handled this way?’ He seriously considered the matter and promised, ‘We will take all necessary steps.’” 

The Jungbu District Office said it appeared to be a problematic situation and that they would investigate, so Ji waited. In the end, however, the Jungbu District Office concluded that there was no problem.

“They came once at the end of August and stayed for about two hours, apparently sitting in the principal’s office before leaving. When I asked whom they had met, I was told they met four people: two teachers from the student guidance department, the homeroom teacher whose students had repeatedly requested that this issue be resolved, and the head teacher of that grade. Under those circumstances, how could that investigation possibly be considered objective?”

“I then called the supervisor in charge of school violence at the district office. The day I called was September 2, but as of September 1 the person in charge had already been replaced. The new person said they had only read the documents and found no major issues, that they had listened to the school’s explanation and found no procedural violations, and that there were no problems with the investigation process. I felt utterly deflated.”

“They said ‘Matters involving human rights during the investigation are not our responsibility.’ Their role, they said, was only to convene the School Violence Review Committee once the school submitted its findings.”

In the meantime, the School Violence Review Committee was held. Measures for the three perpetrators were concluded as follows: written apologies and dismissal for lack of evidence.

“The day the committee met was also the day when the school sports day was being held. Some of the students [the victims] were participating as athletes, and the committee was held at 2pm, a time when the students could not attend. The students later expressed complaints to me about this as well.”

“Because the parents of the victimized students were already deeply disappointed with the Jungbu District Office, not a single one of them attended the School Violence Review Committee. In the end, the student whose sexual harassment had been particularly severe was told to write a written apology and do five days of volunteer service in the school. The second student was told to write a written apology. The third student was found not guilty due to insufficient evidence. This outcome once again caused great disappointment to the victimized student and their parents.”

Even the written apologies were not properly carried out. 

“One student wrote the names of several victims at the top, then wrote a single handwritten apology below. That apology was photocopied and distributed to the other students. The victimized students brought it to me and showed it, saying, ‘This is what they gave us.’ How can that be considered a sincere apology? The second student who was supposed to submit a written apology did not apologize at all.”

“I met with the superintendent of the Jungbu District Office, the head of the Integrated Support Center, and the supervisor in charge of school violence. When I explained how the matter had been handled within the school, I was told that a written apology was a recommendation, not mandatory.”

As the case remained unresolved, a dangerous misconception spread—that even sexual violence would go unpunished.

“Students who had committed very serious acts were not properly guided, and many other students were excluded from the process altogether. As a result, sexual violence continued. I raised this issue with the vice principal and stated that a solution was necessary.”

“The vice principal responded by saying that in order to resolve the issue, once again ‘The names of the victimized students are required.’ When asked, the students said, ‘I’m afraid and don’t want my identity exposed,’ and ‘I’d rather just endure it.’ This situation continued. Recently, I heard from parents who came forward that one student who had suffered sexual harassment was considering dropping out of school, and another had stopped attending school altogether.”

Ji Hye-bok requested a reinvestigation by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s Student Human Rights Education Center. 

“Because the students feared exposure of their identities, they met separately and secretly—almost like a covert operation—at places like a bakery, and then met together with the center director and investigators. At those meetings, the students gave testimony and expressed their demands. The parents of the victimized students were also met separately. This process continued until mid-October.”

After a long investigation, eight months after the incident occurred, the Student Human Rights Education Center issued a recommendation stating that violations of the victimized students’ human rights had occurred during the investigation process. 

“The recommendation included detailed findings of fact, an apology from the school principal and the teacher who conducted the investigation to the victimized students and their parents, comprehensive sexual violence prevention education for students, parents, and teachers, and the establishment of broad, systemic measures to address the issue. I felt relieved.”

Ji Hye-bok attempted to share the school notice and request implementation of the recommendations. However,  as she was about to do so at the end of December, she was notified of an involuntary transfer.

“From the perspective of the principal and vice principal, how uncomfortable must it have been for me to be there? If the recommendations had been publicly announced and implementation required, I would have demanded compliance on site and monitored it. Anyone could predict that removing me from the school would be considered necessary.”

The official reason given for the transfer was seniority-based reassignment. However, at Ji Hye-bok’s school there were three history teachers and two social studies teachers, meaning history teachers were in surplus. Transferring a social studies teacher like herself would result in a shortage. Nevertheless, the school claimed that history and social studies were integrated subjects and transferred her against her will.

“In reality, according to the plans for the 2024 school year, the school needed two social studies teachers and two history teachers. There were not three history teachers. The school combined history and social studies and applied a rule based on who had been at the school longest, saying ‘The person who is set to transfer earliest must leave [now].’ At first, I thought that if such a standard had been agreed upon in a faculty meeting, perhaps it had to be followed.”

“But history and social studies are independent subjects. Their instructional hours differ, their textbooks differ, their exams differ, and their curriculum plans are separate. After 2010, world history, which was previously included in social studies textbooks, was merged with national history, making history a completely independent subject from social studies. Teaching licenses are also issued separately, as clearly stated in education law.”

“From the standpoint of students’ right to education, guaranteed by the Constitution and the Framework Act on Education, it is a basic principle that subjects should be taught by teachers who are licensed in that subject. Otherwise, one would be saying that social studies teachers can arbitrarily teach history and history teachers can arbitrarily teach social studies. That does not make sense.” 

[Interviewer]: “The content is different, and so are the areas of specialization, and from the students’ perspective, they cannot properly learn under such conditions?”

“That’s right. I concluded that this was neither reasonable nor principled.”

The basis the middle school used for the transfer was a document titled the “2014 Middle School Teacher Transfer Plan.” According to Ji, this document was an arbitrary internal guideline created merely to assist transfer administration. It has no legal force and violates higher-level regulations.

“When one looks at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s guidelines for middle school curriculum organization and operation, social studies and history are clearly separated, with distinct operational guidelines. That document is an officially promulgated administrative notice with legal force. There is also the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s Secondary Teacher Personnel Principles, which state that the first criterion for transfer is subject-specific supply and demand. This too is an officially announced document. According to all legal grounds, social studies teachers and history teachers should have been selected separately for transfer.”

“Up until 2023, even the Jungbu District Office issued transfer appointments for social studies and history as separate subjects. Other district offices did the same. But then, suddenly, on December 29, 2023, they combined the two subjects. I checked the websites of all other district offices. All of them still separate the subjects—western, eastern, southern districts alike. I have also served as a committee member for over ten years in consultations related to Jungbu District Office information, and until 2023, transfers were always conducted separately. Yet suddenly, in 2024, only Jungbu combined them.”

Ji Hye-bok is now awaiting the result of her appeal regarding this unjust transfer. What she truly wants is for victimized students to no longer be hurt, and for them not to regret having had the courage to speak out about sexual violence.

“There is a Teachers’ Appeals Review Committee. If I win, I will return to my previous school. If I lose, I will proceed with an administrative lawsuit. However, rather than waiting for legal judgment—which takes too long—I am demanding that the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, as the appointing authority, resolve this immediately and allow me to return as soon as possible.”

“Waiting for a court ruling takes time, and the students are now in their third year and will soon graduate. A parent told me that the students are worried that what they started may have caused harm to the teacher instead. Hearing that broke my heart. I want to tell the students face to face that this was not their fault, that they did what they needed to do, and that it was wrong for adults to cover it up and avoid resolving it. By my return, I want them to see that things were set right—that justice still exists in our society. I want to return quickly and work to ensure that the recommended measures are properly implemented. The students showed remarkable courage in trying to resolve this issue themselves. But if, during the resolution process, they become discouraged, thinking, ‘We’ll never report again,’ and graduate in a state of resignation, then I will never have the chance to speak to them, nor show them that things can be corrected within the school. I want to remain a teacher to whom students can come—even quietly—to share the harm they have endured.”

[Woman speaking at a protest; unclear if these are her words or Ji’s]: “I will make this struggle a victory and return dignity, courage, gender equality, and justice to children who suffered in silence after being victimized. I will give back to survivors of sexual violence the courage and will to change the world, and I will help create safe, gender-equal schools. I ask for your solidarity and support. Thank you. Tujaeng!”

* * * * * *

The Kyunghyang Shinmun reported on Ji's court victory and some of the other issues surrounding her case: 

At the time, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education also did not recognize Ji Hye-bok as a public-interest whistleblower. In response to Ms. Ji’s request to withdraw her transfer, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education sent her an official notice in March 2024 stating that it was “difficult to definitively regard her as a public-interest whistleblower.” At the time, the Office of Education judged that it was difficult to view Ms. Ji as a public-interest whistleblower based on the Anti-Corruption Act rather than the Public Interest Whistleblower Protection Act. However, in this ruling, the court applied the Public Interest Whistleblower Protection Act and determined that the transfer constituted a disadvantageous measure.

In response, Ms. Ji refused to report to work and appealed the unfairness of the situation through a one-person protest. The school dismissed her, citing unauthorized absence. It took two years for a ruling to be issued. During Ms. Ji’s protest, civic groups formed a joint countermeasures committee, and after the December 3, 2024 illegal martial law incident, she received support and encouragement from the so-called “Wasp Comrades” (citizens who quickly rush to sites of struggle, like the “Wasp Man” who appeared on a variety show). Victimized students and parents also submitted petitions to the court to support Ms. Ji.

This case left both hope and limitations in terms of protecting public-interest whistleblowers. After the sentencing, Ms. Ji stated in front of the courthouse, “I want teachers who, like me, suffered and left their schools after raising problems within schools to be fully protected,” and added, “I hope today’s ruling gives them courage.” As she said, this ruling confirmed that legitimate public-interest reporting is protected by law.

The problem is that it took more than two years of raising her voice in the cold streets before Ms. Ji was recognized as a public-interest whistleblower. In a Kyunghyang Shinmun interview last March, Ms. Ji reflected on the words “Please win, no matter what,” spoken by the Wasp Comrades as they shared their own experiences of victimization during their student years. Thinking of students who had suffered sexual violence, she said she felt she could not give up. Without the solidarity and support of civil society, this may have been impossible.

Ms. Ji’s arduous struggle stemmed from the fact that she was placed in a legal blind spot immediately after making her public-interest report. The Public Interest Whistleblower Protection Act stipulates punishment of up to three years’ imprisonment for those who disadvantage whistleblowers. Yet, as in Ms. Ji’s case, once a whistleblower is subjected to a transfer or dismissal, they are forced to endure the harm until they are officially recognized as a public-interest whistleblower. Even when whistleblowers apply for protective measures, only 7.3 percent of cases have been accepted by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission over the past five years. [...]

Resolving the core issue of the case—sexual violence within schools—also remains a challenge. Ms. Ji said, “If sexual violence was blatant before School MeToo, now it has simply gone underground,” adding, “When a teacher steps forward to address a sexual violence case, they become isolated. They are subjected to criticism and attacks from the offending students, their parents, and fellow teachers.” Analyses pointing to the intensification of anti-feminist and far-right sentiments among teenagers in recent years only deepen these concerns.

* * * * * *

This Reddit post notes the name of the school, and when I looked it up, I suddenly remembered a story told to me by someone I know. She moved a bunch of her daughter's things to her brother's house in order to convince her daughter's school that that was her address (there was an inspection) ahead of her graduation from elementary school. This was because, she said, based on her own address, her daughter was likely to be sent to a co-ed middle school full of boys, and she wanted her to go to a girl's middle school instead. Seeing the location of the offending school, I realized that it was likely that school in particular she was trying to avoid.

It's unfortunate Ji was unable to be there for her second-grade students' final year and graduation, though the last article suggest she remains in touch with them. There are several elements of the system, most notably those at ground level in the school, that terribly failed the girls who spoke out and the teacher, while others did their job as they were supposed to, like the SMOE Student Human Rights Education Center, though that only succeeded by contacting it secretly. At least SMOE isn't appealing the ruling, but that's a pretty low bar when you consider she was holding a sit-in in front of its main office for two years and they could have done the right thing at any time.

Encouraging Outrage: The Inculcation of Anti-Japanese Feeling in South Korea

Almost ten years ago, in the summer of 2016, I wrote this post (titled "Comfort Women, nationalism, and the inculcation of anti-Japanese feeling") that focused mainly on an exhibition of comics about the comfort women that I had seen two years earlier. Not long after posting it I was asked if I could write a piece for another website based on the post, which I did eventually (I was busy doing my MA at the time), adding more background on how the comics came to be made, but it never got published. It popped into my mind the other day and, I realized it was still gathering dust in my draft posts, so I decided I might as well publish it (with updated links and some cosmetic revisions). Relations between the ROK and Japan have since worsened (2019 was a pretty dire year, though nothing compared to 1974; a story for another day) and then more recently improved to their best in years, but I don't think these attitudes have gone that far away, at least for those over the age of 30. I've been meaning to look through the newest elementary school history books to see how they portray the colonial period, but that's a project for another day.

* * * * *

In 2007, while working at an English hagwon in Seoul, I asked a class of grade five and grade six students where (or rather, when) they would go if they had a time machine. One boy did not hesitate to give an answer: "To Hiroshima in 1945 to see Japan get nuked." While one can profess shock at hearing an eleven-year-old express bitterness toward Japan with such intensity, the mere fact of such an expression is not surprising considering the pervasiveness of anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea.

Relations between South Korea and Japan have long had their ups and downs, but controversies rooted in the colonial period, such as the comfort women issue and the territorial dispute over Dokdo / Takeshima, have worked to raise tensions over the past two decades. While attention has been directed to the omissions of Japanese history textbooks, the depiction of Japan within South Korea's education system is also worthy of scrutiny. The portrayal of the colonial period in South Korea has long highlighted the brutality and rapacity of Japan and the victimization of Korea, punctuated by the heroic deeds of independence fighters, As a study of depictions of World War II East Asian and American history textbooks by Daniel Sneider describes it,

The narrative of the wartime period offered to South Korean students is focused almost entirely on the oppressive experience of Koreans under Japanese colonial rule and on tales of Korean resistance to their overlords. The larger wartime context for Japan’s increasingly desperate and forced mobilization of Koreans for the war effort—namely the quagmire of the war in China and the mounting retaliatory assault of the Americans after 1942—is not provided. South Korean textbooks barely mention the outbreak of war in China in 1937 or the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in the case of the main textbook published by the government there is no mention at all of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Considering these omissions, it is less difficult to be surprised by textbooks (which I've examined but was first informed about by Scott Burgeson) which make assertions such as "the steadily unfolding independence movement at home and abroad formed the basis of liberation," or, "Ultimately, liberation was the fruit of our nation's independence struggle, which constantly fought the Japanese empire at home and abroad." The focus on homegrown resistance to Japanese oppression is not only found at the middle or high school level, however. Similar messages are aimed at young children, and one of the primary means of encouraging historical bitterness is tied to the need to defend South Korea's sovereignty over the Dokdo islets. At the elementary school in Seoul I taught at in the early 2010s, Dokdo Day (October 25) was, in the words of the vice-principal, "a day to sing a Dokdo song and impress upon the children once again that Dokdo is our land." While not an official holiday, the military has, in the past, greeted the day with military maneuvers around the islets. It was approached in a softer manner for children, who were encouraged to sing songs like "Dokdo Is Our Friend":

From ancient times Dokdo has been our friend
From the days of my ancestors Dokdo has been our friend
A place where white seagulls go to rest
A place where waves beckon
A place where fluffy clouds sing
A place where love dreams
Don't be lonely, we are there,
Our precious friend
We'll be together forever
Friend of the nation

In addition to this, Dokdo Studies is a part of the curriculum, while at the sports day held every other year, where entire grades took part in choreographed mass dances, grade two students performed a flag dance to the song "Dokdo is Our Land." Some schools have "Dokdo learning centers" featuring various maps, displays, and even scale models of the islets.

The school I worked at, after years without one, opted for a "Dokdo video learning center" which featured a television screen set to a special KBS channel which broadcasts live video of the islets, offering students a constant reminder of the islets' existence.

That schools (in some cases constantly) "impress upon the children" from a young age "that Dokdo is our land" may help explain why there is such an emotional component to this territorial dispute in Korea.

In addition to material critical of Japan within the education system, well-known children's book publisher Nobelgwa Gaemi has a series of books titled Hanguk Uiin Jeonjip (Complete Series of Great Korean People) with books focusing on different Korean heroes such as Kim Ku or Yu Gwan-sun. In addition to biographical information and photos, the books contain illustrations of events in Korean history designed to make an impression upon a young audience. One such event is the murder of Queen Min by Japanese assassins;


Another is the torture of Yu Gwan-sun by Japanese police;


The suppression of the Samil protests by Japanese police;


The assassination of D.W. Stevens in 1908;



The assassination of Ito Hirobumi in 1909;




In fact, An Jung-geun's assassination of Ito has been depicted numerous times, such as at the Independence Hall of Korea:

This illustration aimed at children depicts the assassination at an exhibit on An Jung-geun held at the Seoul Museum of Contemporary History in 2015.

The captions transform an image which, devoid of context, would resemble a thug shooting an elderly man into a "noble soul" and great patriot.

In addition to violent acts against Korean victims or by Korean patriots, far more controversial topics related to the colonial era have been depicted in sequential art that would appeal to children. In February 2014, a South Korean exhibit about the comfort women, entitled "Flowers that Never Wilt," was held at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in western France, where 17,000 visitors attended the exhibit. South Korea's Gender Equality and Family Minister Cho yoon-sun attended the opening, though festival director Franck Bondoux said that "The subject was proposed by the South Korean government but the artists were completely free to evoke the subject independently," Not everyone was happy with this exhibit:

Japan's ambassador to France, Yoichi Suzuki, said he "deeply regrets that this exhibition is taking place," saying it promoted "a mistaken point of view that further complicates relations between South Korea and Japan."

In addition, according to the Joongang Daily, extremist Japanese civilian organizations sent a petition to the local press signed by 16,000 people calling for the exhibition's cancellation. The event organizers also "shut down a Japanese publishing booth, which displayed a banner that read, 'Comfort women do not exist,' claiming the booth was politicizing the event." As a KBS article described it,

the special exhibition of Korean comic strips and cartoons about the wartime sex slaves told their heartbreaking stories and exposed the ruthless savagery of the Japanese military to the world. Koreans are still angered by the fact that young, innocent Korean women were taken from their homes and forced to satisfy the sexual urges of Japanese troops. However, this heinous incident is little known outside of Korea. [...]

At the special exhibition the stories of Korean comfort women took the forms of comic strips, cartoons, installation artwork, animated films and documentaries. Seventeen comic works, four videos and three installations displayed at the 41st Angouleme International Comics Festival were so revealing and heart-wrenching that visitors were outraged at the extent of cruelty inflicted on innocent people during the war.

As comics artist Kim Gwang-seong described it,

"The reactions were hotter than I expected. People left so many encouraging messages, telling us how outraged they were. The reason they were so shocked and infuriated is that teenage girls were dragged from their homes and forced into sexual servitude for years.[...] I was surprised to see older French women get teary as they saw our comics." 

Much like high school textbooks that omit the international dimensions of World War II and obscure how Korea's liberation was achieved in order to highlight Korean heroism and Japanese repression, the description of  teenage girls being "dragged from their homes and forced into sexual servitude" obscures the role Koreans played in facilitating this comfort women system and in enforcing their silence for over four decades.

This exhibition did not only appear in France, however. Encore exhibitions "testifying to the barbarity of the Japanese Army's comfort women" system, as the Donga Ilbo put it, have been held throughout Korea since, in places such as the Korean Comics Museum in Bucheon. the Incheon Korean Literature Museum, Seoul's Seodaemun Prison Museum, Daejeon Artists' House, the Wonju Hanji Museum, and the National Memorial Museum of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Occupation in Busan, among others; it has also been shown in the US, China, Germany, and Algeria. As well, a statue and permanent installation related to this exhibition were installed in Ahn Jung-geun Park in Bucheon in 2016.

In the spring of 2014 I visited the Museum of Korean Modern Literature in Incheon and came across this exhibit on the first floor, where each page of the comics was printed as a poster affixed in order along the walls. One, below, was titled '70-year-long nightmare':

The comic above tells the story of a former comfort woman in a symbolic way, but also reduces it to an overly simplistic tale beginning with a happy-go-lucky innocent child picking flowers before history overtakes her. This is common to many popular Korean historical films of the first decade of the twenty-first century, such as Taegukki or May 18, which portray innocents happily going about their lives before the events of the Korean War and the Kwangju Uprising, respectively, wash over them like a force of nature. This lack of political commentary stands in comparison to many films of the 1990s which examined the roles the Korean state or ordinary people played in the tragedies of the twentieth century. In Park Kwang-su's To the Starry Island (1994), for example, internal village squabbles contribute to a massacre during the Korean War. Park Kwang-hyun's Welcome to Dongmakgol (2006), on the other hand, depicts a village as a utopia untainted by division which faces destruction at the hands of outsiders, in this case the American military.

While the above comic made use of symbolism and refrained from depicting the sufferings of the comfort women in a graphic manner, other artists were not so reticent, as excerpts from another comic, titled "Where are we going?" reveal:

While the above comic also uses symbolism to articulate the way in which these girls were stripped of their youthful innocence, it also is far more graphic in depicting the exact nature of their sexual exploitation and rape. Beyond encouraging bitter feelings regarding the colonial era and Japan, these depictions of female suffering are in accord with gendered representations of the colonial era in Korea. According to this nationalist division of labor, women such as Queen Min, Yu Gwan-sun, or the comfort women are victims:

Men, on the other hand, are heroes who actively stand up to Japan:

The division between these spheres of remembrance can be defended quite vigorously. In 2008, when it was suggested by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan that a museum devoted to the comfort women be built in Independence Park (the location of Seodaemun Prison History Hall), former independence fighters and their descendants harshly denounced these plans:

"The proposed museum denigrates the independence movement and the men who gave their lives as patriotic martyrs for the liberation of Korea," said Kim Yeong-il, the [Korea Liberation] Association’s president, at the Nov. 3 press conference. "The museum will surely create a false image about our history by highlighting our suffering rather than our many military achievements," Kim added.

This is all quite ironic, considering that the Seodaemun Prison History Hall at the time featured wall-sized photos of mutilated people and depictions of torture featuring animatronic mannequins accompanied by screams on an endless loop. A guide map described one of the highlights of the exhibition: "Torture Room (experiencing nail picking and tortures with boxes and electricity)." Though the museum has since been changed, for over a decade countless students were guided through these exhibits.

One wonders if Sheila Miyoshi Jager's description (in Narratives of Nation Building in Korea : A Genealogy of Patriotism (2003), pgs 71-72) of reactions to the plight of sex workers who served American soldiers could also be applied to the comfort women. She describes them as "both pitied and despised...[and] thus [they] became the symbol of the nation's shame as well as the rallying point for national resistance." That they are a source of "national shame" may explain why descendants of independence fighters would feel the presence of a museum for the comfort women would "denigrate" the memory of the (mostly male) independence fighters, It may also explain in part why these women were rarely spoken of in Korea for over forty years.

This was also highlighted by an unnamed prominent expert on prostitution, interviewed by Michael Breen, who described (off the record) the comfort women issue as "Pure hypocrisy":

We all know Japan was guilty of terrible things up to 1945, but, she said, this chauvinistic focus on justice for a historical matter is popular with Koreans because it conveniently distracts us from the real issue and our own continued guilt. The real issue is the attitude in Korea of men towards women and human trafficking in the sex industry that operates on the scale it does as a consequence of that attitude.

These gendered attitudes have revealed themselves in other ways, such as when Kim Seon-il, a Korean contractor in Iraq, was beheaded in 2004 and the Korean government went to great lengths to ensure the video could not be seen in Korea. While this may have been intended to prevent political criticism of the Korean government's decision to send Korean troops to Iraq, Kim-Yun Eun-mi, writing in Ilda, perceived other reasons. The government's suppression of the video stood in contrast to the display of photos by anti-American protesters of the mutilated bodies of Yun Geum-i, a sex worker killed by an American soldier in 1992, and "Mi-seon and Ho-sun," two middle school girls who were crushed by an American bridge layer in an accident north of Seoul in 2002. Wondering why the photos of these women and Kim Seon-il's beheading video were treated so differently, Kim-Yun wrote:

No matter how you think about it, there is no other conclusion than that this situation reflects the social gaze upon women's bodies. If you look Yun Geum-i's photo, it causes resentment in men whose nationalistic sensibilities have been stimulated. If you are a woman, most look at the photo and feel fear and pain wondering if they could suffer such violence, not react like men thinking "We must protect our sisters."

Furthermore, the effect aroused by Yun Geum-i's photo and internet porn with a rape motif have something in common. They both aim to arouse an intense impression of violence inflicted upon women's bodies. 

The same can be said for images like this, in which the artists were depicting the women's suffering perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

In fact, other comics went even further:

What follows (I chose not to photograph it) is the graphic depiction of the rape of a child. That she was a child was made clear by the size of her breasts and lack of pubic hair (which were on display in the images), but while it might seem surprising that illustrations of this nature were on display for people of all ages to view at the museum, in Korea posting photos, some of them gruesome, of colonial-era Japanese repression in public places like subway stations is not unknown. As well, large images of the bodies of Shim Mi-seon and Shin Ho-sun, the two middle school girls crushed by an American bridge layer, were common sights in subway stations in 2002. Judging by this YTN report, it appears the above final, graphic image of "Where are we going?" and the comic described above were not displayed at the French festival at all.

The fact that some of the most outrageous images were for Korean eyes (and ire) only suggests that B.R. Myers' description of inner and outer tracks of propaganda in North Korea, with the former seen only by Koreans but the latter accessible to outsiders, may also be applicable to South Korea as well. A visit to the Seodaemun Prison History Museum, for example, reveals exhibits that are only partly, or not at all, translated into English and Japanese.

If adults in France felt "outrage" when viewing the comfort women comics, one wonders what effect seeing them - without the self-censorship practiced overseas - would have on Korean children, who most certainly made up a portion of the audience at the exhibitions in Korea. A Korea Times columnist criticizing President Obama for his visit to Hiroshima may have unwittingly provided an answer when he wrote that in Korea "memories of Japan's brutal occupation remain fresh even after the passage of 70 years." Popular culture, media, and the education system work to refresh these bitter memories on a regular basis, suggesting that aspiring to victim status at the hands of Japan (or the U.S., depending on one's political leanings or geographical position in relation to the 38th parallel) is an important element of Korea's national self conception. While sites such as the Seodaemun Prison History Museum have toned down the visual and auditory assaults on visitors in recent years, the depictions of suffering in the comfort women comics reveal that the cultivation of outrage still has a role to play in cultivating anti-Japanese sentiment, which, judging by the degree to which Korean history textbooks dwell on resistance to Japanese imperialism, plays an incredibly important role in modern Korean national identity.

An insistence in Korea on allowing displays like these to portray the nation as a historical victim may encourage a nationalist belief in Korea's moral superiority or, more cynically, serve to distract the populace from more pressing issues, but despite these short-term benefits (if they can be called that), considering its geopolitical position and the fact that the Korean Gordian Knot - its division, and all of the complications associated with it - will remain in place for some time to come, it would seem that inculcating such historical bitterness is something that could prove to be counterproductive in the long term.

The career of artist Lee Ik-tae (and his profile in a 1970 weekly magazine)

I learned from Hahn Dae Soo that his friend Lee Ik-tae (Rhee Iktae), an artist, director, and actor he first met in Seoul in 1974 whom he remembered as a “fun-loving deep thinker,” had passed away. Having been working on an article for RAS Korea’s Transactions 99 about the rise and fall of ‘happening’-based experimental artists in Korea between 1967 and 1970 and their influence on the first crackdown on men with long hair in August 1970 (a topic I lectured on here), I recognized Lee Ik-tae’s name immediately, as he directed and acted in Korea’s first independent feature film, “Between Morning and Night,” in 1970, and later that year joined The Fourth Group, the short-lived collective of experimental artists that provoked the 1970 crackdown on youth culture.

A search in the Naver News Archive reveals that he worked in a variety of media. In the spring of 1973 he directed the play “Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon” (by Eugène Labiche, which premiered in 1860) performed by French literature students from various Seoul universities, in the summer he screened his short films “The Whereabouts of Light” (빛의 행방) and “A Trivial Afternoon” (시시한 오후) (more on the former here), and in the fall he put on a watercolor exhibition. In 1974 he won an honorable mention for his scenario “The Vacation When No One Was There” (아무도 없었던 휴가) in the Dong-A Ilbo's New Spring Literary Contest, and the next year he received an honorable mention for his scenario “Requiem” (진혼곡).

This article reveals more about his later career, one that was similar to many of the prominent experimental artists of the late 1960s in that he moved to the US after Park Chung-hee’s Yusin dictatorship grew harsher. Arriving in the US in 1977, he turned to painting and then founded the performance group Theater 1981, “where he performed plays and experimental performances focusing on sound and visuals.” A number of performances in the 1980s in L.A. were based on the Gwangju Uprising, while another was inspired by the shooting down of KAL 007. As well, he commemorated the first anniversary of the L.A. riots with a large-scale installation art and performance titled ‘Volcano Island.’ After returning to Korea, his performances (including the "Ice Wall" series that featured massive ice blocks stacked on the Unification Bridge and Seogang Bridge) focused on the division of North and South Korea. Living for years in Muju, and later Seoul, he focused on a calligraphy style of painting on hanji, or Korean traditional paper. 

I first encountered his name in the February 4, 1970 issue of Weekly Kyunghyang, which published an article about rebellious youth on the cutting edge and presented portraits of playwright Bang Tae-su, artist Kim Kulim, go-go dancer Hong Hyeon-ju, Bees vocalist Lee Sang-man, and experimental filmmaker Lee Ik-tae. Below is a translation of the profile of him in that magazine:

These Rebellious Youths: The Leading Figures on the Cutting Edge in 1970 

The Current State of the Bizarre Art in Which the Abnormal Has Become Normal

Lee Ik-tae [center], the leader of "Film 70," who sparked rebellion against commercialized, established films and became the first in Korea to produce 

private films. He even appears in a heated bed scene.

Lee Ik-tae, who rebels against established films.

‘Film 70’ and Lee Ik-tae

The trend of underground cinema has landed in our country as well. Last year, a group called Film 69 made a 40-minute film titled Between Morning and Night, which became, in a sense, the first spark of true underground cinema in Korea. The leader of this group is a young man named Lee Ik-tae, who gives off a somewhat eccentric impression and is very monastic in manner. He not only handles the megaphone but also appears in the film himself. He even performed nude in Between Morning and Night, taking on the role with intense dedication.

This film has virtually no plot. No - having no plot is only natural. That is because the world that Film 69, a group of young filmmakers, sought to pursue was one that boldly destroyed all the existing conventions of cinema.

A film without a plot

It is a film that captures, through imagery, the inner psychological landscape of a young man as he wanders from morning until night. At times he enjoys sex, at times he strolls along desolate railroad tracks, at times he has meaningless conversations with unfamiliar women… and these dull incidents unfold dully within dull hours, becoming visualized and given form. It is what one might call a private film. The very act of making a film with no consideration at all for commercial success is, in itself, a remarkably admirable undertaking.

After graduating from S University, Lee Ik-tae entered the film world with a certain sense of purpose. He worked as an assistant director, chasing after sets and locations. But what he gained from the ready-made film industry was nothing but disillusionment. Cinema, corrupted into a one-track commercialism concerned only with box office results… Lee Ik-tae wanted to discover new images—images freshly charged, blazing like sparks.

A solitary task

Thus, a group of like-minded but unknown young filmmakers formed Film 69. Now that the year has become 1970, it has, in a sense, been automatically renamed Film 70. The direction Film 70 pursues can be summarized in a single phrase: the private film.

“Hasn’t that so-called ‘fountain-pen film theory’ been around for nearly ten years now? Cinema should long ago have been liberated from commercial trickery. In Korea, the world I am trying to pursue still feels like a solitary task. There’s no one who feels any sense of connection with my work,” he says, smiling a lonely smile. Because a private film is like an act of self-expression carried out from a place shut out beyond any system or structure, loneliness, in a sense, is inevitable.

Film 70 seeks to uncover the sincere truth hidden deep within the interior of everyday life, as was expressed in Between Morning and Night. Whereas hippies and the Beat Generation often attempt rebellion against the everyday, Lee Ik-tae clings instead to everydayness.

Cinema is a rite in darkness

“The established order must be destroyed”

There are times when the films they make depict sex scenes quite bluntly. Of course, this may be possible precisely because these works are extremely private, like poets sharing mimeographed chapbooks, viewed and critiqued only within the group called Film 70.

But the dense sex scenes they depict are not sex scenes for the sake of sex. Just as the notion of “man separated from sex” cannot exist, they aim to reveal, exactly as it is, the image of sex hidden deep within the veil of everyday life.

It is said that in the United States, especially around New York on the East Coast, many underground filmmakers work in this way. In other words, the term underground cinema arose from the idea of rejecting the conventions of society - the surface, the system, the organization - and slipping down into the underground.

“Isn’t cinema, in its essence, a kind of ritual in darkness? It’s not something sunlit, like a sport held in open daylight. In the dark movie theater… there, an intimate dialogue takes place between each individual viewer and the screen. It’s an image that belongs to the dark, the underground, rather than the bright world above.”

Always describing film as something underground, Lee Ik-tae argues that only private film is truly essential cinema.

'This bill is rather urgent': ROK-US relations and the 1970 and 1975 marijuana crackdowns

My article "'This bill is rather urgent': ROK-US relations and the 1970 and 1975 marijuana crackdowns" from Transactions 98 summarizes a substantial portion of the research I did for my MA, about the criminalization of marijuana in South Korea in 1970 and its influence on the better-known marijuana crackdown of 1975. One of the more surprising findings was that – contrary to current attitudes – the ROK government showed little concern about rising marijuana use among American soldiers in the late 1960s and largely ignored USFK requests to enforce existing laws – an approach that continued until Nixon Doctrine troop withdrawals were publicly announced in June 1970.

The day after that announcement, Korean-language newspapers suddenly declared that marijuana use had become a serious social problem, with some reporting that university students were using it (though, oddly, days earlier only English-language papers like The Korea Times and Stars and Stripes had reported a story about high school students smoking it in Incheon). Equally revealing were National Assembly committee minutes from deliberations on the Habit-Forming Drug Control Bill passed the following month, in which the deputy minister of health acknowledged that marijuana was “not a big problem at this point in Korea” – which contradicted the alarmist tone of news reports at the time. 

The dormant Habit Forming Drugs Bill sleeps atop the National Assembly while users openly smoke marijuana. This cartoon, published in The Korea Times June 10, 1970, is the only political cartoon about the 1970 marijuana 'scare' that I've found.

Reflections on Korea and Australia's longstanding ties

Australian Ambassador Jeff Robinson gave an interesting lecture for RAS Korea this week in which he spoke without notes about his 40+ year engagement with Korea (first coming as a student in 1984) and reflected on the more than 130-year connection between Australia and Korea. I'd had no idea about Australia's role in helping establish POSCO, nor did I know POSCO is Australia's #1 commercial customer. I summarized his lecture here.

One set of stories not included in his talk are of the Australians who survived POW camps in Korea. The first group were POWs captured in Singapore by the Japanese who were interned in Seoul and Heungnam from 1942 to 1945; I drew on the memoir of Australian Eric Harrison in particular when writing the article "To make Koreans positively realize the true might of our empire": The use of Allied POWs for propaganda purposes in Korea during World War II (Transactions, Volume 97).

During the Korean War, Australian missionary Philip Crosbie was interned with other civilians at the beginning of the war and spent three years in an internment camp, surviving the death march of 1950 that claimed around 100 lives. According to Larry Zellers, in his book In Enemy Hands, it was Crosbie who spearheaded an effort to confer with other internees and arrive at the sequence of events and dates related to their imprisonment (Crosbie also convinced Zellers to write a memoir as well). Crosbie's memoir - copied twice - was seized before he was freed, so he rewrote it immediately after he was freed and published it as Pencilling Prisoner in 1954.

Hahn Dae Soo's (rare) appearances in Korean magazines, 1968-71

The other day, Hahn Dae Soo posted on his Facebook wall a link to this blog post about his September 1969 concert at the Drama Center on Namsan. I remembered an interview with him in Sunday Seoul from that time about the upcoming show, and posted a photo from it in a comment to his post, and before long I was posting the entire article and a translation, and then a few more articles...mostly because there was actually very little published about him back in the late 60s and early 70s.

I realized this five years ago after Jon Dunbar, who was planning to interview Hahn for The Korea Times, asked if I wanted to join (my response was brief: "Yes."). Having gone through years of weekly magazines from that time, I was surprised as I did some research beforehand to realize that Hahn was not really in them. I would eventually learn why while speaking with him. But one article I found was from fall 1968, right after he returned to Korea from New York City after years away. The background of that report can be found in the article I wrote based on our interview, which explains his time in NYC, his return to Korea, his visit to a dabang, a single show at the music room C'est Si Bon, his appearance on TV, and his interview by the Weekly Joongang. It was actually only we when were chatting after the interview that I realized that all of these events occurred in the space of about ten days. He was pretty shocked when I pulled out a printout of the 1968 article:

Jon: I’m sure this must be the era when people referred to you as Korea’s first hippie.

Matt: Um..

Jon: You have something about that?

Hahn: Hee hee hee hee – Matt has something. Oh my god.

Matt: I've gone through pretty much every weekly magazine from 1968 to 1976…

Hahn: Oh my god.

Matt:  And maybe there have been more [articles], but that’s when you first came back in 1968.

Hahn: Oh wow, you’re right! That was a controversial – I remember that – that was a controversial interview. People went crazy: “What is this guy? Who is this, you know, long haired…” They considered me as demented. 

Matt: I love the scare font: “HIPPIIIIE” It’s a monster…

Hahn on the picture: It’s a shot of a be-in or happening. And people sleeping together. That’s precious

Matt: You can have it… the part under the photo…

Hahn (laughs while reading in Korean): He didn’t have LSD because it was hard to get, but smoked marijuana – oh my god, that’s [perfect].    

Here is the article (followed by a handful of others), from the September 15, 1968 issue of 주간중앙 (Weekly Joongang; translated by ChatGPT with corrections):

A Korean Hippie Returns from America

According to the authentic [hippie] Hahn Dae Soo

Eat, play, and sleep to your heart’s content

“Is someone a hippie just because they took their clothes off? They say it’s an ideology.”

Their ultimate goal is a “new religion”

Modern society “does not keep God’s word”

Greets his homeland with songs he composed himself

It is not a “pseudo hippie” who, with hair grown long and wearing strange, peculiar clothing, proudly roams the streets of Seoul, but a genuine hippie who has landed in Korea. Hahn Dae-soo, age 21.

Hahn says he could not try LSD because it was hard to obtain, but that he has used “marijuana.”

His father went to New York, obtained permanent residency, and is running an offset printing business, and his mother lives in Jeonhwa-dong. She remarried to another man. At age ten he went to America, lived three years under his father’s care, returned to Korea to live three more years under his mother, then returned to the U.S. again and survived on his own for four years before returning on the 28th of last month. This is the abbreviated résumé of Hahn Dae Soo, the first “hippie” to take root in Korea.

A Baekjo [swan] cigarette hangs from the tips of his fingers. Cigarette smoke rises from the long, unkempt hair that covers his ears and neck. There is no vacancy in his eyes, and every word he speaks is logical and coherent.

Not a denial of society

He avoids talking about matters like Korea’s position on the Vietnam War or his own personal opinions. When gently asked why, he gave as a reason certain aspects of Korea’s unique international situation, which make hippie ideology unable to take root in Korea.

“There are societies where hippies can be tolerated and societies where they cannot. Korea, you could say, is a society where hippies cannot be accepted. Even if something called ‘hippies’ were to appear here, it would only be an outward form. For example, even if someone walked the streets naked, that would just be an external display - it wouldn’t be behavior emerging from hippie ideology. Hippie thought, in short, is something you can only attain if you are prepared to stake your entire life on it.”

Greetings are kisses and ‘peace’

This spring at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, more than fifty men and women appeared nude to welcome the spring in a festival called the “Celebration of Spring.” In London, the so-called “hippie dress”—strips of paper tape wrapped around a naked body—is in vogue. In April, a 17-year-old boy named Terry Kenney walked through downtown San Francisco stark naked, deep in thought. These are the images of “hippies.” They do not deny society; they live within it, working when they want to, eating when they want to, playing whenever they wish. That is the “hippie society.”

“In New York’s ‘hippie society,’ they sometimes rent out Central Park and, for a whole evening, do everything they want to do. They dance naked, sing, and even engage in sexual relations. Lately, because of charges of public indecency, when hippies rent the place the police come to monitor them, so sexual relations can no longer occur openly.”

In the hippie society the greeting is “Peace! Peace, brother!” and then a kiss. And they exchange “drugs” as well. 

Floating away on hallucinogens

LSD, marijuana, opium, speed—these drugs, used by hippies, are also said to be a form of rebellion against society. Taking these drugs makes everything look, sound, and feel more vivid.

“But not every hippie habitually uses these drugs. It’s the same as with alcohol -there are people who like it, and there are people who can’t take it at all, right? In my case, LSD was hard to find so I couldn’t try it, but I’ve used most of the others. Once I smoked marijuana and listened to music, music I usually listened to all the time, it felt completely new. Thanks to marijuana I could find the ‘vision’ in that music that I could not usually find.”

Melody charged with stimulation

Since music came up, I asked about “hippie music.” Known as “underground” music, hippie music can trace its roots to the Beatles. Based on the conviction that rock-and-roll could have more depth than classical music, they attempted a new musical revolution; this too is “hippie.” These days “acid rock” is in fashion, in which both the singer and the listener take drugs together and enjoy the songs. One clear feature of hippie music is that its lyrics often criticize U.S. government policy.

“The melodies are very stimulating, and the lyrics strike directly at LBJ (President Johnson). These songs can’t be played on radio or TV, but among the public they are wildly popular. The hippies like McCarthy, but they dislike President Johnson, Vice President Humphrey, and candidate Nixon all the same.” 

So they completely rejected the recent U.S. presidential election as well and instead elected a new president of the ‘Hippie Society.’

Undressing and sleeping on the floor

To live the life of a hippie, one must leave home. And one must enter a crash pad, a place where only hippies gather. The crash pads are financially supported by an organization called the “Digger,” formed from hippies who have achieved economic success. Therefore, hippies in crash pads do not work: they play and eat.

 “I lived in one too. It’s filthy. A room has several wooden bunks, and if you miss your turn, you just sleep on the floor. There is no distinction between men and women. People throw off their clothes wherever… it’s chaos.”

Girls who frequently run away from home and mix in here, at the crash pads in New York’s “East Village,” the gathering place of “hippies.”

Even in such circumstances, he said, new ideas continually sprout. One especially noteworthy fact is how deeply Oriental elements have penetrated the “hippie society” - particularly Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Eastern music such as Ravi Shankar’s sitar.

Enshrining Buddha statues, studying the East

“In the hippie society, the prevailing view is that Christianity has failed as a religion. For example, commandments like ‘Do not steal’ or ‘If someone strikes your cheek, offer the other’ are, they say, considered impossible to observe in our society. So they looked elsewhere for a religion and arrived at Buddhism. It is not that they plan to continue believing in Buddhism, but that after widely studying many religions, the ultimate goal is for the hippie society to have its own new religion. Some hippie friends even enshrine Buddha statues and incense burners and seriously study Buddhism.”

A firm resolve to return home

Hahn’s highest education is one year in the agriculture department at the University of New Hampshire, which he left. After that he studied photography for a year at the New York Institute of Photography. He has published works such as photos of the New York Peace Rally in Ramparts and other magazines. He said that his return this time came after a major resolution. 

“I have been singing for a long time. Composing, writing lyrics, singing, performing… I want to express my thoughts among young people through my songs. When I feel that purpose has been completely achieved, I will disappear on my own.”

Laughs at the word “hippie”

On September 4 he appeared at C’est Si Bon and performed songs he himself wrote, and many university students gave him an enthusiastic welcome. He said it gave him confidence. As for what ideas are contained in his songs, he keeps his mouth firmly shut. “Hippie?” He laughs. One more lingering question: Having left the “hippie society,” can he truly abandon hippie ideology?

For the time being, with his mother

For the time being he will stay in “his mother’s house.” Until he settles again, he says he has no other choice. Still, although he is used to sleeping on the floor, this hippie Hahn does not eat breakfast. We will watch carefully to see how he will live in this society.

—Jeong Ran-ung

As Hahn told me, he was basically "tricked" by the reporter, who asked him all kinds of questions about hippies in the US and then wove his answers into a sensationalist article.

Hahn: This [newspaper story] had a great impact [. ...] So my mother reads this – at that time, this was a big article. Most articles are [small], but this is almost a full page. So she’s in tears, she doesn’t know what to do. So eventually, I didn’t last at the house more than a year – I got kicked out. 

He went on to rent a small room and make money by teaching English and guitar. Photos of him in his room were taken and appeared in articles the next fall when he announced his first headlining performance, to be held at the Drama Center near Namsan.

Completed in 1961, the Drama Center - which hosted a number of folk music performances in the late 1960s and early 1970s - still stands today.

Here is an article from Sunday Seoul, August 31, 1969:

Highlight:

Writing lyrics, composing, and performing all by himself

Expressing the emotions of people in their twenties in his own way

A hippie singer giving his first recital since returning to Korea

Hahn Dae Soo (21), who returned from the United States last August with long hair and flamboyant clothes and acquired the label of “hippie singer,”  is holding a recital. It is the “Hahn Dae Soo Singer-Songwriter Recital,” which will take place at 7 p.m. on September 19 and 20 at the Drama Center. Though it is a small-scale recital with a total production cost of 150,000 won, it is the first “recital” since his return to Korea by this 22-year-old composer-performer who writes lyrics, composes, performs, and sings all by himself.

In a “program” lasting more than two hours, Hahn Dae Soo plans to present what he calls “the most experimental music in Korea.” After hearing it, people will either like it insanely, hurl curses, or else be left utterly bewildered. He intends to synthesize “guitar,” “harmonica,” jing [traditional gong], other possible sound effects, and his own voice. “If people sympathize with my expression, there is no greater honor, and even if they cannot and everyone gets angry and walks out, there is nothing I can do - such is this concert.” From both the performer’s perspective and the audience’s, it is clearly experimental.

For this performance, Hahn Dae Soo began intensive practice three months ago. “His practice space was a small boarding-house room in Myeongnyun-dong. He ‘gathered up’ lyrics as they came to him, and prepared fifteen songs composed just as they suddenly occurred to him while walking or while sleeping. To introduce one of them, the lyrics of a piece titled “The Last Dream”: “It rains, it snows, the sun sets, the sun rises. Last evening there was a fire. A shack on the mountain, look out the window, let’s watch an amusing film, you live, I live, let’s work hard and become rich, I hear a voice from the grave, Kim Satgat’s laughter, someone who has not yet gone, listen to this sound.”

—What does it mean?

“It is a scene of the human world as seen from a window. Suddenly it struck me that the sight of humans wriggling like insects was, somehow, amusing like watching a movie.”

—Do you think you yourself are merely a spectator, not included among the wriggling humans?

“I felt something like that last winter. An old man was crawling up a snow-covered slope, and it struck me that he was myself, and I felt an intense sense of righteousness. Isn’t the world bound to change anyway, and isn’t everyone going somewhere?”

—Do you like the title “hippie singer”?

“I absolutely hate it. The past is the past, and the person I am now is not a ‘hippie.’ When I returned, people strangely attached the label ‘hippie,’ but is everyone with long hair a ‘hippie’?”

He seems to have changed quite a bit. When he returned last year, he walked the streets of Jongno blowing a piri [fife], with loosely disheveled long hair and peculiar clothing. Even now his hair hangs down long. But unlike then, it is neatly groomed, and he dresses fairly smartly. “When I first returned to Korea, I planned to wander across the whole country with a guitar like Kim Satgat. But these days I want a stable life. A life where I can settle inside the music I love.”

His thinking seems to have changed a lot as well.

Around him now is a group of about thirty young people who form a like-minded “group.” “Group” does not mean any formal structure, but a free gathering of people who meet whenever they can to enjoy music. This recital too, he says, has been arranged by these friends.

The expectations he has for this recital are not small.

“You may say my music isn’t even music, and that’s fine. But since I’ve expressed the emotions of people in their twenties in my own way, young people will sympathize with it. In our country, there is no creative work by young people. It’s hard for a writer in their fifties to express the emotions of someone in their twenties exactly. I’m giving it a try. Even if it’s bad, it will at least be a starting point for progress.”

Two weeks later, 주간여성 (Weekly Woman) published a short interview with him on September 17, ahead of his performance:

A Singer Who Isn’t a “Hippie” but Has a Hippie Style

Hahn Dae Soo, holding a Lyric-Writing and Composing Recital, on the 19th

“Why am I a hippie? I’m not. I’m just me, you know.”

With a smile on his lips, the 21-year-old Hahn Dae Soo answers a question with a question when asked, “Do you have any thoughts about the buzzword ‘hippie’?”

His hair is long - over 30 centimeters, probably even longer. You almost never see him deliberately comb or smooth the hair that hangs loosely down to his shoulders.

From the outside, the only clear feature is the long hair; otherwise he is simply an ordinary, tall young man (about 174 cm). He makes music - unusual music that most people do not readily attempt.

“My music doesn’t follow any particular form. It’s not psychedelic. I just put it together as it comes out of me.”

If one insisted on comparing it to existing musical patterns, it would be somewhat like folk-song.

He mostly sings while playing the harmonica and guitar, but he also uses a saw, a gong, and tape-recorded sound effects. It’s also a bit removed from what people call “avant-garde music.” He simply expresses what he feels through music—that is what he is doing.

He previously studied animal husbandry in the United States, but it didn’t go well, so he attended a photography academy. To earn tuition, he played guitar and sang in the evenings at a salon, and from that he began to study music in earnest. Hahn Dae Soo will present that kind of music in a recital held on the 19th and 20th at 7 p.m. at the Drama Center - a showcase of his own lyrics and compositions. “Twin Folio” and Kim Hong-cheol (the yodel singer) will make special appearances, and Lee Baek-cheon will serve as MC.

“Aside from music, I don’t really have any special skills or distinguishing traits,” Hahn says. These days he spends nearly all his time practicing in a small room with just his guitar, microphone, gong, a pipe, some cigarettes, matches, and an ashtray—doing little else.

–How do you manage your living expenses when your income can’t be much?

‘It’s still okay. Well, I don’t eat very much, so… I just get by.’

On October 1, 주간여성 (Weekly Woman) was the only magazine to write about and show a photo of the performance (the first line of the title is cut off, and lyrics for 'To the Happy Land' follow; the rest uses some guesswork at the missing words):

[...] Clutching his guitar... Hahn Dae Soo recital

Pull back the curtain,

With my narrow eyes

Let me see more of this world.

Open the window,

So I can once again feel

The dancing breeze.

On the evening of September 19, at the Drama Center, there was a rare 'happening.'

"What on earth… this is strange…. At times it feels like a shaman, and at other times like the sound of someone starving and going into a fit; anyway, in some way it seems mad…" - that was Hahn Dae Soo’s Singer-Songwriter Recital, his debut concert. With the audience erupting in cheers, the singer clutched his guitar.

When he howled like a beast to the rhythm of poetry, he [expressed] all of this and the world with his whole body.

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As the folk music scene began to expand, solo singers were joined by male-female duos, which became quite popular (Toi et Moi had a top ten hit with '약속 (Promise)' in mid-1970), but Hahn was in the Navy during the early 1970s and missed out on these developments, though Kim Min-ki included a cover of Hahn's '바람과 나 (The wind and I)' on his debut LP (soon banned), and Yang Hee-eun, who sang many of Kim's songs and scored a Number 1 hit with '아침이슬 (Morning Dew)' in 1972, also covered 'Land of Happiness.'

Despite Hahn recording two albums in 1974 and 1975, at the height of 1970s youth culture, I have not found any appearances in weekly magazines after the articles in 1969, with the exception of this commentary article (part 8 in a series on folk singers, then rising in popularity) in 일간 스포츠 (Daily Sports) on June 11, 1971.

Korea’s Folk Stars (8)

Too original a realm, leaving a distance from their fans

Prefer melodies over lyrics

Do not imitate foreign folk styles as they are

Singing only self-written songs...

Hahn Dae Soo・Kim Min Ki

Because the overseas pop scene is so vast, there are all sorts of people, but the common point that folk singers of star status share is that the lyrics of the songs they sing deal with themes that can give universal sympathy to all and thus are global in scope.

In the case of Bob Dylan (born 1941), who was introduced and debuted at the 3rd Newport Folk Festival in 1961 by the female folk star Joan Baez, the one song of his own - Blowin’ in the Wind, which lamented, “How many wars must a man go through before he regains peace, and how many years must pass before a person becomes truly human?” - was enough for him to become a standard-bearer of modern folk singers.

He not only used acoustic guitar but even attempted accompaniment with electric guitar, spearheaded the emergence of folk rock, and though recently he has focused quite a bit on love songs, in any work whatsoever Bob Dylan sings his own thoughts through lyrics that anyone can sympathize with, and thus reigns as a star.

Among domestic singers, however, there are many who, having become infatuated with the profound realm of these overseas folk stars, imitate them poorly(?) and, despite their high musical talent, they are unfortunate because they fall too deeply into a highly individual realm and thus cannot gain much sympathy from others—.

Hahn Dae Soo (27), who was once a topic of conversation as a “hippie singer,” and new face Kim Min Ki (20), are representative cases. Of course, there are also many fans who, valuing their musical level highly, prefer the songs rather than the lyrics.

In Hahn’s case, it is only that his lyrics are quite difficult because he assigns his own meaning to clusters of abstract words like “sea,” “wind,” “justice,” and so on. Rather than saying he was poorly influenced by overseas pop stars, it seems more accurate to say that he is forming an independent music of his own, just as modern jazz does.

Having lived in America for a long time and associated with hippies, and even after returning home three years ago maintaining his own style of life despite others’ scorn, his representative songs such as ‘내사랑아 (My Love)’ and ‘The Wind and I’ exude Hahn Dae Soo’s unique charm in their melodies and accompaniment, whatever the lyrics may be. Particularly, his original piece ‘과부타령 (Widow’s ballad, apparently an early version of 고무신),’ written in English employing his extensive English ability, well contains his “eccentric” artistry. Because his music is too unique, perhaps it cannot become a profession; singing is his side job, and advertising photography is currently his occupation.

Folk singer Hahn Dae Soo, who is showing even the realm of jazz

Kim Min Ki—having graduated from Gyeonggi High School and presently in his second year in the Western painting department at Seoul National University’s College of Fine Arts—initially debuted as a duo called “Dobidu,” but became a solo singer starting early this year.

He is highly popular among female students, and he makes it a point to sing only his roughly twenty self-written songs such as ‘아하 누가 그렇게 (Aha, Someone, in that way)’ and ‘Morning Dew.’ Judging only by his musical “appearance,” he is the most reminiscent of Bob Dylan and a promising talent. His guitar skill and compositional level are extremely high, but because he tries to put his unorganized thoughts into his songs, they become complex works that fail to narrow the distance with the public. ‘귀하에게 (To You),’ which depicts a thieves’ village, is a fairly successful protest song, but his other songs sound overly complicated in their lyrics, perhaps because he tries too hard to write them in his own difficult way.

Kim Min-ki

There is of course the case of the unknown American folk singer John [SIC Tom] Paxton*, who took the lead in the antiwar movement with the ironic expression “Teach Me How to Kill,” but the lyrics dealt with by most modern folk songs generally make it a principle to contain unvarnished life, higher-level philosophy, or love, rather than short-sighted political opinions. The song itself is the purpose, and once it reaches a realm where it can be used as a means for some social movement, it is no longer a song.

Among domestic folk singers as well, there are at times those who, having misunderstood this difference in concept, receive resistance from fans - an error characteristic of the early folk-song era.

【Reporter Kim Yu-saeng】

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Well, that closing sentence was the reporter's opinion, but it's pretty clear which folk singers from the early 1970s have stood the test of time.

* Tom Paxton is best known for his anti-Vietnam War song "I Got A Letter From LBJ." Ironically, going through 1960s and 1970s Korean magazines isn't a bad way to learn about more obscure or forgotten Western music from that time.