Spurred by public outcry over Ha Young's ancestry, Korea once again reckons with pro-Japanese collaborators

Earlier this month, actor Ha Young became K-drama's latest breakout star with the success of Netflix's original rom-com “Our Sticky Love,” starring alongside actor Jung Hae-in. But the sweetness of her newfound fame quickly turned sour after the revelation that her family held a dark secret linked to imperial Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule over Korea.

On a recent episode of the KBS television variety show “Problem Child in House” (2018–), Ha Young introduced the four generations of doctors in her family: her great-grandfather, grandfather, father and older sister. And that's where the trouble started.

“My great-grandfather studied Western medicine in Japan,” she boasted, adding that he had treated Emperor Gojong (1852-1919) and founded the first Western medicine hospital in Hanyang, the historic name for present-day Seoul.

However, after online users found and shared pro-Japanese remarks made by Ha Young’s great-grandfather, historians confirmed that he was a collaborator during Japan’s bitter period of colonial rule over Korea.

The actor’s social media accounts were soon flooded with hate comments, urging her to retire, with many online users calling her a chinilpa, meaning pro-Japanese collaborator, or even maegukno, national traitor.

“Isn’t a life of comfort and privilege for generations enough?” one comment with over 35,000 likes read on Ha Young’s Instagram page. “Do [collaborators] really need to be loved by the public as well?”

Pro-Japanese collaboration from during Korea’s painful history of colonialism is a highly sensitive topic among the public. At the core of the controversy is the Korean government’s failure to properly punish these collaborators after Korea’s liberation in 1945, allowing their descendants to continue benefiting from wealth and property that were accumulated by their relatives during the colonial occupation.

This bitterness is perhaps best encapsulated in the Korean saying, “for three generations, chinilpa families prospered, while the descendants of independence activists struggled to make ends meet.”

However, this changed recently when the Korean government announced plans to relaunch a commission later this year to identify and recover assets acquired by pro-Japanese collaborators. This will be the first time in more than 15 years that the commission has been active.

Eighty-one years have passed since Korea was liberated from Japan’s control — so why is Korea still grappling with the legacy of pro-Japanese collaborators?

Who is Ha Young’s great-grandfather and what did he do?

Ha Young’s great-grandfather, An Sang-ho (1874-1927), was a trained physician who left behind a record of pro-Japanese activities.

An was the councilor of the pro-Japanese group Daejeong Chinmokhoe in 1916 and a member of a preparatory committee for a private group that mourned the death of Hirobumi Ito (1841-1909), the first resident-general of Korea during Japan’s colonial rule. Ito was assassinated by Korean independence activist Ahn Jung-geun (1879-1910).

In a Dec. 10, 1918, article by the Maeil Sinbo, the official newspaper during the colonial period, An even identified himself as Japanese.

“I don’t own a single set of Korean clothes, and I can’t eat spicy food at all,” he was quoted as saying in the article. “Because I have nothing to do with Koreans, living here is not different from living in Japan. Even though I have lived in Korea for 11 years, I cannot speak a single word of Korean.”

After her controversial television appearance, Ha Young posted a handwritten letter on her Instagram on Aug. 12 expressing regret over her lack of knowledge about her family’s past.

“Until now, I knew my great-grandfather's life only in fragments, from stories passed down through my family,” she said in the letter. “Shamefully, in that ignorant state, I brought up stories about my great-grandfather in various settings as if they were a source of family pride.”

The Center for Historical Truth and Justice, a civic group dedicated to addressing issues related to pro-Japanese collaboration and Korea’s modern history, assessed the Ha Young controversy as one that stemmed from the lack of historical awareness and reflection.

“She made public remarks that hurt people without showing even a basic understanding of her ancestor’s role in collaborating with Japan’s colonial rule,” the center said in a statement on Aug. 14. “She should first humbly reflect on her failure to acknowledge her ancestor’s role rather [than] celebrating his legacy.”

What exactly is a pro-Japanese collaborator?

Simply put, chinilpa refers to Koreans who worked in favor of the Empire of Japan from around the time of the 1905 Eulsa Treaty, which had forcibly made Korea a protectorate of Japan, until Korea’s liberation in 1945.

The Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators, published in 2009 by the Center for Historical Truth and Justice, which documents 4,389 pro-Japanese collaborators, mainly defined them as individuals who either participated in acts of treason or directly contributed to suppressing Korea’s independence movement.

The criteria include whether their cooperation with Japan was voluntary, active, repeated and sustained over time.

An, however, was not named in the dictionary, which the center clarified does not necessarily exonerate him from his pro-Japanese activities. It explained that as the list was compiled based on academic research and historical records available at the time, a number of people were left out due to lack of evidence and resources.

“His collaboration carries significant historical responsibility, given the fact that intellectuals and professionals were highly influential in shaping public opinion and spreading colonial ideology,” the center said.

The official number of pro-Japanese collaborators remains contested. The Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaborations for Japanese Imperialism in 2009 announced the number to be 1,006, which remains the government’s only and latest official list of chinilpa.

But pro-Japanese organization Iljinhoe alone, which was active from 1904 to 1910, recorded over 140,000 registered members, according to a Japanese survey at the time. The group advocated closer ties with Japan, ultimately supporting the annexation of Korea.

What has the Korean government done about chinilpa over the years?

Korea has made numerous attempts to hold pro-Japanese collaborators accountable, most of which are generally seen as a failure.

After Korea’s liberation in 1945, the United States Army Military Government ruled over Korea until 1948 and largely maintained the administrative structures of the Japanese colonial era, delaying efforts to investigate and punish Japanese collaborators.

On Sept. 22, 1948, Korea established its first legal framework for punishing pro-Japanese collaborators with the enactment of the Anti-National Conduct Punishment Act (translated), which allowed those found guilty of actively cooperating with the Japanese Empire to face prison sentences or even the death penalty.

However, Korea’s first President Syngman Rhee was against the bill, as he intended to protect fellow government officials who would be accused of pro-Japanese collaboration and likely removed from office. Yet, the promulgation went through as more than two-thirds of the National Assembly voted in favor of the law.

The assembly also founded a special committee, along with a separate police force tasked with investigating the regular police, as many of them had collaborated with Japan during the colonial period.

The special committee’s authority was severely suppressed, and ultimately dissolved just a year later. Numerous lawmakers who supported the committee were arrested on allegations of communist ties, followed by a police raid of the committee’s headquarters as well.

Only 293 people were indicted among some 7,000 people initially presumed to be pro-Japanese collaborators. Only 10 of them received prison sentences but were eventually released as the assembly passed a law in 1951 abolishing the Anti-National Conduct Punishment Act altogether, effectively bringing the short-lived law to an end.

How is the Korean government responding to the issue today?

On Aug. 16, the government announced that it would relaunch operations this December to track down assets hidden by pro-Japanese collaborators and return them to the state.

The National Assembly passed a special act on the state seizure of property belonging to pro-Japanese and anti-national collaborators in May this year, which provides the legal basis for the activities of a government commission.

“[The upcoming operation] is expected to recover at least 32.5 billion won [$23.4 million] worth of assets acquired through pro-Japanese collaboration,” then-Justice Minster Jung Sung-ho wrote on Facebook the day before the announcement. “The recovered assets will be used primarily to support the welfare of independence activists and their descendants.”

It’s the second time in Korean history that the government is set to conduct such investigations, following the first commission’s operation from 2006 to 2010. During the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the commission determined that 2,359 parcels of land owned by 169 pro-Japanese collaborators be transferred to state ownership.

As a result, the total value of the assets recovered was valued at 237.3 billion won at the time.

The first commission was a temporary body established under a special law that dissolved in 2010 after a four-year mandate. The latest legislation was introduced to allow the government to continue identifying and recovering such property.

To prevent descendants from hiding the assets by selling them, the law will also allow the government to recover the money they received from those sales.

The bill also includes a new provision to reward people who report or help uncover pro-Japanese assets.

Lawmakers recently urged An to be included in the committee’s upcoming investigation and if determined to have been acquired through pro-Japanese collaboration, to confiscate the large mass of land he had owned. Previous media reports claimed that An owned some 8,900 square meters (2.2 acres) of land that was expropriated by the government in 1983, but it hasn't been confirmed whether his descendants had still owned the land nor if they had received compensation for it.

“It turns out this pro-Japanese family owned major tracts of land around Anyang and Gunpo stations,” Rep. Park Eun-jung of the Rebuilding Korea Party said in a Legislation and Judiciary Committee meeting at the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Friday.

“The great-grandfather did not accumulate the family’s wealth later in life through being a doctor, but he was already a large landowner who had amassed a considerable fortune from pro-Japanese activities during the colonial period.”

How should descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators, including Ha Young, acknowledge their ancestors’ past deeds going forward?

Holding descendants accountable for their ancestors’ wrongdoing raises a delicate question: How much remorse should they be expected to feel for actions they did not commit themselves?

Article 13 of Korea’s Constitution states that no citizen shall suffer unfavorable treatment on account of an act not of their own doing but committed by a relative. In other words, that means that sin of a great-grandparent should not bestow guilt on the descendant as well.

Some experts in Japan acknowledged that Ha Young's great-grandfather had engaged in various acts of collaboration with imperial Japan but also pointed out that the responsibility should be limited to those who were directly involved, not their families or descendants.

Other descendants have taken into their own hands to repent on behalf of their disgraced ancestors, such as singer Jun Bum-sun, a descendant of a pro-Japanese collaborator named Lee In-jik. Jun has been vocal about publicly discussing his family background on his YouTube channel and making donations to historical organizations.

Actor Lee Ji-ah has also publicly apologized about her grandfather being listed on the Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators. She has reportedly visited the Center for Historical Truth and Justice to learn about and reflect on her family history.

Ha Young now faces a similar choice: She can follow in the footsteps of other pro-Japanese descendants and own up to her ancestors’ past, or hope that simply a handwritten apology will save her reputation. So far, however, the public hasn’t been very forgiving.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [[email protected]]