Blast from the Past: A Peninsula Is Liberated, a Nation Is Born

▲ Flag of South Korea, 1945–1948.

There’s a lot to celebrate in the Republic in August: the end of the War in the Pacific (WWII), the liberation of the Korean Peninsula, and the birth of the Republic of Korea – all on the same date, August 15 (represented as “8.15” in Korea), though not all occurred in the same year. In this issue, we bring you an account of how Korea went from a dynasty, to a colony, to an independent nation based on two earlier articles appearing in the Gwangju News, both by Dr. Shin Sangsoon: “The Way the 8.15 Korean Liberation Was Brought About” (August 2003) and “August 15 (8.15): Liberation and Birth of a Nation” (August 2010). — Ed.

The 19th century was the age of imperialistic colonial expansion by the Western powers, and toward the end of the century, Japan also availed itself of this trend lest it should miss the colonialization bus. A brief chronology of events shows the imperialistic appetite of the Western powers for this part of the world.

The West’s appetite for territorial expansion was not satiated in the Orient. It extended to the African and American continents. In fact, there was no place under the sun that did not feel itsInfluence (see the box below for a chronology). The British proudly, or audaciously, proclaimed that the sun never set on the British Empire. Meanwhile, Korea (Joseon Dynasty) was a bone of contention between the Japanese, Chinese, and Russians during the latter half of the 19th century. After winning the two wars with China and Russia in 1895 and 1905, respectively, Japan’s domination of Korea was swift and stark, formally annexing Korea in 1910.

Starting with the ruthless suppression of the March 1st Independence Movement in 1919, Japan imposed a series of harsh measures to erase the language and culture of the Korean people. They confiscated land (in those days, the only means of production) through the so-called Land Survey Policy. They imprisoned Korean language scholars on the pretext of instigating nationalism, forbade

1802

1854 1857–1862 1863 1840–1842

1856–1858

1857–1858 1866

1871 1894–1895 1898 1904–1905 1910 UK occupies Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1819: Singapore, 1824: Malaysian Peninsula, 1853: Burma (Myanmar), 1858: India. U.S. Navy requests that Japan open her ports. Franco–Vietnam War. France occupies Indochina. France occupies Cambodia. The Opium War. China cedes Hong Kong to the UK and is forced to open five ports extraterritorially. The Second Opium War. The UK and France attack China and conclude the Treaty of Tianjin, opening the Yangtze River. Russia occupies the Amur River in Manchuria and Vladivostok. The USS Sherman sails into the Daedong River in North Korea. The French fleet attacks Ganghwa Island near Incheon. The U.S. Pacific fleet attacks Ganghwa Island. Sino–Japanese War. China cedes Taiwan and Liaotung Peninsula to Japan. Spanish–American War. Spain cedes the Philippines to the U.S. Russo–Japanese War. Russia cedes southern Sakhalin; Korea becomes a Japanese protectorate. Japan annexes Korea.

the teaching of the Korean language in schools, and ordered the use of the Japanese language in schools and homes. They suspended newspapers, conscripted Korean youth into the Japanese army, and forced laborers to work in mines and on the warfront. They forced the Korean people to change their names to Japanese-style names, asserting that the two peoples shared the same ancestors. And they mobilized young women as sex slaves for the Japanese army.

Against this situation, the Cairo Declaration in 1943 (by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chang Kai-shek) promised Korean independence after the war. With the surrender of the Axis powers (Italy and Germany) in early 1945 and the surrender of Japan on August 15, Korea was liberated from the yoke of Japanese colonial rule.

For South Koreans, “8.15” has a dual meaning: One is liberation from the 35-year yoke of colonial rule under the Japanese (1910–1945), and the other is the birth of the Republic of Korea on August 15, 1948. Liberation came on August 15 (8.15) of 1945 when Japanese Emperor Hirohito offered an unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces. When the surrender was made, Korea was not yet divided into north and south, so the whole of Korea rejoiced at the surrender and celebrated the liberation together. But in early September 1945, Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur had to announce that North Korea and South Korea would be governed by Russia and the United States, respectively, divided at the 38th parallel. MacArthur said the division would be a temporary devise just to accept the Japanese military surrender. But as everyone knows, the division turned out to be a bone of contention between North and South from that time forward.

As for the other meaning of 8.15, emotionally overshadowed by the 8.15 liberation, people tend to forget that it also celebrates the birth of the Republic of Korea (ROK), which took place in 1948. It was in Cairo, Egypt, in November 1943 that the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, and China met and discussed matters of world affairs for after the war. In their Cairo Declaration, Korean independence was referred to as such: “…in due course, Korea shall be free and independent….”

On October 24, 1945, the United Nations was inaugurated with the Russian government’s ratification. The UN intended to govern Korea under trusteeship for the immediate future. At this news, the entire country – north and south – opposed the plan vehemently. The sentiment was “no more foreign rule!” Thirty-five years of colonial rule was enough! Then suddenly, the Communists in North Korea accepted the trusteeship, while the right

▲ Liberation! Korean activists released from prison.

wing in the South opposed it. The Russo–American Joint Commission, which should have dealt with the problem, was not even able to convene a meeting with the social organizations and political parties to discuss the situation. Ensuing joint commissions failed to reach any conclusion. In the end, the Korean question was referred to the UN Special Political and Decolonization Committee, and there it was decided that a general election should be held over the whole of Korea under UN supervision to establish a lawful government and carry out the withdrawal of Russian and American forces. To supervise this, the UN General Assembly decided to dispatch a UN Korean Interim Commission to Korea.

The Russian military government in the North, however, did not allow the UN Interim Commission to enter North Korea to supervise the general election. In the end, a general election was held only in South Korea (on March 10, 1948) and the elected delegates formed the Constitutional Assembly (July 17). Three days later, the Assembly elected a president and vice president of Korea. The next month, on August 15, 1948, the Republic of Korea was proclaimed, and the U.S. military government was deactivated. As for the North, they held their own election without UN supervision and proclaimed the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on September 9, 1948. In December of the same year, however, the UN General Assembly in Paris recognized the Republic of Korea as the only legitimate government in Korea. From the Joseon Dynasty, to colonial Chosun, to the Republic of Korea, a people were liberated and a nation was born.

By Isaiah Winters

▲ The Imgok Station hanok and its Japanese-influenced platform.

Just when you thought hanok architecture had been consigned to either moldering country homes or sterile boutique spaces, a lone hanok restorer in his mid-20s emerges with a vision to not only restore traditional houses in the present but also preserve their structural designs for posterity via 3D modeling. This is the unique undertaking of Kang Dongsu, the one-man carpentry crew behind Baemui (배무이), his hanok restoration business. After interacting for some time via social media, we finally met up in June to discuss traditional Korean architecture and his efforts to conserve it. This we did beneath the flying eaves of three hanok in the Gwangju area, each in a vastly different state of (dis)repair: his parents’ beautifully preserved home near Chosun University, a badly dilapidated home on the outskirts of Imgok Station, and his own home undergoing restoration in Gyerim-dong. This article will recount the highlights of each in turn.

First, Kang warmly invited me to his parents’ tastefully restored home in Dongmyeong-dong. I soon found that the home doubles as a workshop where his mom makes her own Mother Goose brand of chic handbags and other accessories from Italian leather. When I entered, I saw Kang’s wife and a few student apprentices each tending to their cuts of leather along a large wooden table. Upon viewing this, one of my first questions had just answered itself: His artisan streak was clearly a family trait. The warmth and creativity I’d later see in Kang was also reflected in how his mom welcomed me with coffee, cake, and a barrage of friendly questions.

As for the house itself, it was Kang’s idea to buy it seven years prior. Although he was only in his late teens at the time, his parents had faith in his choice and went through with the purchase. Thanks to his keen eye for appreciating real estate and his parents’ willingness to invest, the house has since trebled in value. Sensing my eagerness to look around, Kang took me through all its rooms, including

the sarang-bang (reception room), the cozy, book-lined loft, and the other rooms and recesses hidden behind shelves of leather handbags. Outside, the house features a one-of-a-kind balcony that Kang is constructing for his parents with wood and tiles from a hanok in Naju. Eventually, that’s where they’ll enjoy tea with a view.

In the shade of this charming house, Kang and I spent some time discussing a few of the differences in hanok styles seen across the country and during different time periods. I quickly realized that my simplistic appreciation of hanok aesthetics left me with a very low-resolution understanding of the influences shaping each structure. To the trained eye, however, the design of a single hanok can tell a highly complex story. For example, a hanok’s proximity to certain timber sources would affect its design, like with how the straighter, better-quality wood found up north allowed hanok there to have thicker timber frames relative to those in the south. Hanok styles were also highly subject to the eras in which they were designed. Pre- and post-colonial hanok styles differed greatly, as did those built en masse in the 1960–1970s during what Kang calls Jeolla’s “golden age” of mass-produced hanok, when about 100,000 of them were built over a 20-year period in Gwangju alone. (He really needs to write a book on all this.) With such a wealth of knowledge to tap into, I was excited about what he’d say at our second hanok of the day. After saying goodbye to his family and leaving everyone to their creative work, Kang and I hopped in the car and drove to the outskirts of Imgok Station to visit a large but badly decayed hanok I’d been saving just for him. As we approached it on foot, I threw out the one question I’d most wanted to ask him: “What’s the first thing you notice about this house?” He told me to look at the shape of the main pillars. “They’re narrower at the top and wider at the bottom – that’s a late Joseon-era design.” Kang suspected that the house had been built (and then later rebuilt) in stages, and that its pre-colonial pillars from the turn of the 20th century might have been repurposed from some earlier structure. This blew me away because, although I knew this particular house had some especially old design motifs, I never suspected that it dated back that far. The bulk of the structure, he estimated, was from the 1920–1930s during the Japanese colonial era, as some of the newer additions like the right-side platform were Japanese in design.

With the entire backside of the house just an open chasm of wooden beams and rubble, we had no trouble getting inside, where we found a trove of family heirlooms. A family registry along with family photos soon turned up, the latter of which I’m always meticulous about looking through. Fortunately, Kang is a patient guy, so while I scoured each and every photograph for any before-andafter shots I could match up with the house, he gave a detailed look at an old, beautifully written speech that we’d found folded up like an accordion. Sadly, these artifacts and the hanok itself likely won’t be around much longer, as I recently heard from the friend who first showed the place to me that it’ll be torn down soon.

Satisfied that we’d gotten to see almost all of the house inside and out, we headed back to Gwangju to see the restoration work Kang has been doing on his newly purchased home in Gyerim-dong. At the end of a cozy alleyway, far away from all the buzzing of motorbikes and footsteps of passersby, Kang unlocked a gate and revealed his carpenter’s sanctuary. Giant saws, angle grinders, mallets, buckets, and wooden beams of every shape and size were scattered about in what looked like more of a workshop than a home. Having just seen his

▲ Kang, his miter saw, and his work in progress.

mother’s living workspace hours before, this arrangement made perfect sense.

As of now, only the conjoined kitchen and sarang-bang are habitable, with a bathroom en suite. The restored kitchen is rich in earthy tones that stay true to the home’s original makeup. In fact, whenever possible, Kang repurposes the soil and wood he removes from the house for his new additions. Though the trend these days is to brighten homes up as much as possible, the lighting he installed can be dimmed to look warm and understated, like candlelight. This soft glow brings out the walls’ earthen texture and the raw, unvarnished look that he prefers his beams to have. It was great to see an interior that worked with shadows rather than trying to eradicate them.

I presume it’s going to take Kang a long time to finish the other parts of the house as outlined. For example, he plans to add an internal staircase and second floor for his future kids to use. These ambitions, plus his regular job restoring hanok locally and around the country, in addition to the work he’s doing on his parents’ home are all a lot for one person to handle. Then there’s the 3D modelling project that he does on the side for his clients and for the collective memory of hanok architecture more broadly. In short, he’s got his work cut out for him – and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Photographs by Isaiah Winters.

Originally from Southern California, Isaiah Winters is a Gwangju-based urban explorer who enjoys writing about the City of Light’s lesser-known quarters. When he’s not roaming the streets and writing about his experiences, he’s usually working or fulfilling his duties as the Gwangju News’ heavily caffeinated chief copy editor. You can find more of his photography at @d.p.r.kwangju

In South Korea, a country that is praised by many for its good quality education, surprisingly little is known about alternative schools that prepare students for different (alternative) life paths and offer them divergent educational backgrounds.

One such school, the Raemi School, is located in Gwangju’s Hwajeong-dong at the Hwajeong Youth Culture Center. The name of the school was coined by the first cohort of students themselves when the school was established in 2012. Raemi (래미) is the reversal of the syllables of the Korean word mirae (미래), which means “future.” By giving this name to their school, these students wanted to clarify that they looked at their futures “the other way around” and from a different perspective than their peers.

The Raemi School is a place where the focus of learning is finding and becoming “oneself.” In this school, the students embark on a journey to find joy in the process of learning itself. They can freely discover and choose what kind of skills they feel that they need to learn. Therefore, the keywords that the Raemi School emphasizes in the learning process are “self-reliance” and “independence.” The students learn not only how to find and recognize themselves, but also how to gain confidence to rely on their strengths and their own skills in creating the life that they want.

Nevertheless, learning how to co-exist with others and developing “community spirit” bear the same importance as the abovementioned foci. While reflecting on their own existence and its place in the world, by growing up in the Raemi School’s community, the students naturally learn how to empathize with others’ feelings, express their opinions in a healthy way, discuss, and create a safe learning environment.

The classes and activities at the Raemi School can be summed up with the following categories: art, humanities, traveling, life skills, and local community. When it comes to actual classes, students themselves propose the things they would like to learn more about. They discuss the suggestions among themselves, and once an agreement is made, the school then invites a teacher to conduct the chosen classes. For example, in case there are five students who are interested in studying Japanese, and one student in studying French, the class that starts off the semester would be the Japanese class, and the one student interested in studying French would have to wait until some more students would like to join in learning that subject in the future.

As the example illustrates, students discuss all of the important matters connected to their school life and rules with each other and with the teachers, gaining experience and learning the meaning of “community” and “society.” The students also cook their own lunch with the teachers, wash the dishes and clean up after themselves, clean and repair what needs to be repaired around the school on their own, and tend to the garden and surrounding environment of the school, keeping it a clean and pleasant place to be. In this process, they get to learn how to work with agriculture, like how to plant and harvest rice. They also take part in local community events and interactions, such as April 16 Sewol Ferry memorial events, May 18 Democratic Uprising-related learning activities, and athletic competitions.

However, probably one of the greatest and most demanding projects of the Raemi School and its students is the World Trip Project, which is unfortunately on hold at the moment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This project allows students to prepare their own 100-day trip around the world, starting from choosing the destinations and learning about them, to organizing and planning the excursion and collecting the funds in the first semester – and then actually going on the trip the following semester. This sort of travel that one embarks on in one’s teenage years helps students broaden their horizons, explore the wide world, and create significant relationships and experiences when meeting new people far from the safety of their own home.

Furthermore, every student at the Raemi School sets their own study goal, like what they want to achieve personally during the education process, and the two head teachers are there to understand these goals, advise the student on their learning path, and navigate them towards achieving their

◀ Previous page: Top left: Raemi School Completion Ceremony, December 2020. Top right: Students also cook their own lunch with the teachers, wash the dishes and clean up after themselves. Bottom left: Students tend to the garden and surrounding environment of the school. Bottom right: Students learning how to transplant rice seedlings.

▲ Clockwise from top left: Raemi School students commemorating the 7th anniversary of Sewol Ferry incident on April 2021, students also harvest the rice they planted themselves, many of the students try to especially develop their musical talents, current Raemi School students and a couple of graduates with their teacher Min-jeong, students and teachers built their own keyhole garden next to the school.

ultimate purpose. Finally, the Raemi School does not have final exams as a method of evaluation. Rather, the students present what they have learned, made, or achieved at a Completion Ceremony at the end of every semester, twice a year.

Even though the Raemi School does not provide specific university entrance exam education, students still do learn the compulsory subjects such as math, history, English, etc. Most of the classes, however, are related to culture, art, travel, and the environment. Of course, it is possible to get back to conventional education and enter regular high school or enter university after graduating from the Raemi School. Students who wish to do so have to take special qualification exams. Still, such students are few. Most of them continue their path at another alternative school or tertiary institution, or they become independent and find or create their own jobs upon graduating from the Raemi School.

The Raemi School is an integrated middle and high school, so anyone between the ages of 14 and 19 (Korean age) can apply for entry. After receiving the application documents, admission is decided through individual interviews. If you are curious to learn more about the Raemi School, you can visit the Raemi School Café on Naver (in Korean) or follow the Raemi School student activities on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. You can also get further information on the Gwangju Hwajeong Youth Culture Center website (www.gjyc.or.kr).

Lastly, some of the current Raemi School students, as well as a couple of graduates, and one of their head teachers, Lim Min-jeong, were happy to share their thoughts and experiences about the school in a short interview.

Gwangju News (GN): To begin with, please choose one word to describe yourself, one word to describe the Raemi School, and then let us know how those two words connect. — So-hee: I can describe the Raemi School with the word “free” and myself as a “bird.” I can fly, but I need a lot of practice, and the Raemi School teaches me about freedom. There are so many difficulties when you want freedom, but Raemi helps you find your way to freedom. I do not know if I will be able to fly after I graduate, but this school allowed me to grow, and I am satisfied with it. — Min-jeong: It is not easy to choose a word to describe myself, but what first comes to mind is something an old friend said about me in the past – she said I am like a “weed.” [Laughs.] I believe she said it because I can survive and live well anywhere, no matter the circumstances. The

word describing Raemi then would have to be a “garden patch.” As I said, weeds can put down roots and grow anywhere, still, Raemi’s land is not an already cultivated rice paddy or field, but a fertile ground of endless possibilities to plant and grow whatever we want. So, I believe that a “weed” such as myself can fit into and grow well in Raemi’s “garden” as well.

GN: Why did you choose the Raemi School? — Min-ha: I felt like my many talents would go to waste if I went to a regular school. [Laughs.] I wanted to develop various talents and skills, so I came to the Raemi School. I just never saw myself as part of the current “education triangle” – “home-school-academy” – that most Korean students are going through. — Min-jeong: I started working as a Raemi School teacher in August 2012. Therefore, based on my nine years of experience, I can say that the usual reason why students and their parents choose the Raemi School is because they do not trust conventional education. They wish to get out of the pre-determined routine and the designated school curriculum. Rather, the students hope to spend their teen years channeling their youthful energy in a different way than is provided by the regular national curriculum and learning different things and life skills. There are also students who tried going to regular schools, but they felt like they could not fit in very well, or that it did not fit their future life goals, so they looked at alternative schools and came to the Raemi School.

GN: What is the best aspect of the Raemi School? — Min-yeong: I chose the Raemi School because I wanted to be able to choose the things that I wanted to learn. So, I believe the best aspect of Raemi is that it provides students with the opportunity to learn the things they would not be able to learn at a regular school. I feel that during my years at the Raemi School, my vision of the world has broadened and I have gained lots of invaluable experience. — Min-ho: I came to the Raemi School right after elementary school because I was curious to learn more things about real life that I thought I could not learn in a regular school. I feel the greatest thing I learned at Raemi really is work. Whatever work it may be, I think that Raemi School’s best aspect is truly developing students’ skills in many different fields of work.

GN: What would you like to change about the Raemi School? — Ye-woon: I went to an alternative elementary school and another alternative middle school before I came to Raemi. I feel that the Raemi School could still develop way more as an alternative school and gain its independence. It seems to me that the Raemi School is still too connected to the office of education, which is a pity, and should spread its network more.

GN: What are your plans for after graduation? Or if you have already graduated, what are you doing now? — Ji-min: I am learning how to play the electric guitar at the Raemi School. It is very fun, and I think I am very good at it. So, I want to keep doing my best, practice a lot, and continue my life as a musician after I graduate. — So-hee: At the Raemi School, I study humanities with Teacher Min-jeong, and I like it a lot. So, I want to study humanities more. I think that college is a good place for me. Therefore, after graduating I will study for Korea’s college entrance exam. Maybe it will be hard, but I will work hard for my future in humanities! — Sang-yoon: I entered the Raemi School right after elementary school, and since I am 19 now, I graduated last semester. As you might have noticed, in Korea there is not a lot of awareness about cyclists being part of the traffic, and it can be dangerous to go on the streets. So currently, I am visiting elementary schools and educating kids about safety in traffic when riding a bike. We get on a bike together and learn about it through practice. — Soo-woon: I am 21 and I graduated from the Raemi School two years ago. At the moment, I am a PD for a community radio station. We broadcast community news, of course, but I am also focusing on collaborating with and creating contents for young adults who are similar to my age.

GN: What would you like to say to invite new students to the Raemi School? — Yeon-woo: At the Raemi School, you can learn so many things, and more than anything, you can learn the things that you want to learn. Also, if you feel like you do not really fit into the conventional education system, try and join us! — Yoo-woon: I always like to say that Raemi’s greatest weakness is that it does not have any weaknesses. [Laughs.] So, to everyone wanting to come to the Reami School, I would just like to say that I hope you will come and learn a lot at a school with no flaws!

Photographs courtesy of the Raemi School.

Jana Milosavljevic was born and raised in Serbia. She currently lives in Gwangju, and she loves exploring and learning about new cultures and meeting new people. In order to be able to communicate with as many people as possible, apart from Serbian, she has learned English, Japanese, Korean, and German. @janemiya