[송평인 칼럼]False history based on ‘spiritual influence’ that is neither progressive nor conservative.

During the Japanese colonial rule, the nationality of all Koreans in their passports was Japanese.
There is no evidence that you are not Japanese, and that you do not have Korean nationality.
The lie comes from the ‘spiritual gain’ without losing the country.
Ignorant and unable to distinguish between nationalism and nationalism holders

Song Pyeong-in, Editorial Writer, There are many passports that state Japanese as the nationality of Koreans during the Japanese colonial period. On the other hand, there is not a single passport that shows that the nationality of Koreans during the Japanese colonial period was not Japanese or South Korean. Of course not. Because we lost our country.

The nationality of Koreans was Japanese before Japan annexed Joseon in 1910, and since the Japan-Korea Treaty in 1905. The Korean passport was named Park Chang-gyu, whose address was in Haenam-gun, Jeolla -do in 1907, titled ‘Overseas Passport of the Empire of Japan’ and ‘For Joseon subjects only’. This is similar to the fact that residents of Guam, a protectorate of the US, have outside US citizenship.

A Korean passport bearing the name Cheon Hyeon-hee, who immigrated to Hawaii in 1916 after unification, was titled ‘Overseas Passport of the Empire of Japan’, and a Korean passport bearing the named Lee Dong-jin, who also immigrated to Hawaii. in 1938, it was titled ‘Passport of the Empire of Japan’. However, perhaps because it was after the annexation, the phrase ‘for the special use of Joseon subjects’ disappeared.

Most people had not thought of such a thing until some members of the Democratic Party of Korea, including the Chairman of the Liberation Party Lee Jong-chan and Jeong Cheong-rae, asked the public about the nationality of the Koreans during the Japanese colonial period, as it were. threaten them. Because an incident was reported by the Dong-A Ilbo where marathon runner Son Ki-jeong’s Japanese flag was erased, it was assumed that his nationality was Japanese at the time. The common sense was correct.

It was in 2009 that I briefly thought about the nationality of Koreans during the Japanese colonial period. At the time, it was reported that thanks to the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, independence fighters who were treated as ‘stateless persons’ during the Japanese colonial period because they did not have a family record have in Korea Korean nationality. People who had a family record in Korea during the Japanese colonial era were automatically inherited as Korean nationals after the Korean Nationality Act was enacted in 1948, but people without a family record remained stateless.

If the world were one country, there would be no need for nationalism. Nationalism is meaningful when dealing with a foreign country. So when you think of nationality, you think of a passport. In fact, the nationality listed in the passport is given based on data belonging to that country. The data was a family record during the Japanese colonial period.

Today, we do not live in a pre-modern class society and we have not experienced empire, so it is difficult for us to imagine that there can be more than one type of native in one country. Under the Japanese colonial rule, people were divided into Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, etc. according to the family record. The Koreans, Taiwanese, etc. did not have the same rights as the Japanese people. Not only did they not receive full criminal justice procedures, but they also did not receive benefits from nationality laws applicable to Japanese people, such as the acquisition of foreign nationality. However, this did not mean that Koreans and Taiwanese at that time were not Japanese nationals.

Black people in the American South faced a gap between citizenship and nationality until the middle of the 20th century. Although they did not have the full rights of American citizens, their nationality was American. The Koreans’ nationality issue during the Japanese colonial period was a confusion caused by people who could not distinguish between internal rights issues and external nationality issues by mixing them together.

The Dong-A Ilbo reported the anti-Jeok movement that took place in Yongjeong, Gando, Manchuria during the Japanese colonial period in 1923. In February of that year, when a Korean was killed by a Chinese soldier in Yongjeong, the Koreans held a rally there to protest against the Chinese government and at the same time launched a movement to free themselves from Japanese nationality. This is because Japan did not protect the Koreans but attached them to Japanese nationality. At that time, the Koreans, including those in Gando, were Japanese nationals as long as they had family registration in Korea, and the Koreans themselves were well aware of this fact.

As the world progresses, a surprising situation occurs where people are treated as traitors if they talk about their grief about losing their country due to Japanese colonial rule. Since the Korea-Japan connection is fundamentally invalid under international law, the claim that the country was never retroactively lost even during the Japanese colonial period simply reflects the impossibility between -to distinguish between the legal state (de jure) and the real state (de facto). . Just as life cannot be reduced to a law, history cannot be reduced to a law. Whether the Japan-Korea alliance was invalid or not, Japan took over Joseon, and that fact made life miserable for our ancestors. The pain doesn’t go away just because the Korea-Japan bond is invalid.

Since they never lost their homeland during the Japanese colonial period, the claim that the nationality of the Joseon people during the Japanese colonial period was not Japan or that it was South Korea is a lie that arose over time of chaos begets a time of chaos. It is not based on progressive or conservative history, but is merely a false history based on ‘spiritual influence’.