Exploring Human Rights in East Asia *SUH Sung

1 My Life and Human Rights

1.1 War and Colonial Occupation
In 1928 my grandparents moved to Kyoto from the mid Korean Peninsula.
After the annexation in 1910, Japan looted various resources from the Korean
Peninsula, and especially in the rural areas, the Japanese Colonial
Government of Korea and Japanese landowners took Koreans’ land throughthe land survey. Having been driven off their land, Koreans left through theNorth for Manchuria and through the South for Japan.
On April 3, 1945, right after the U.S. forces landed on Okinawa Island,
I was born in Keihokuchō, which was called Shūzan at that time. The town
was located in an obscure area between the mountains. Roads were rough andunpaved, with buses sometimes plunged off steep mountain roads. Now it is
only a half hour’s drive from Kyoto, and we can go there without any difficulty.
In Japan my grandparents lived first in Tokiwa, Kyoto city. Shortly after
my parents’ marriage, the Second World War started, and Koreans too weredrafted for a camp follower. My father was the eldest of six siblings. In thosedays he was the only wage earner of his family of nine, including my grandparents and my elder brother. If my father had been drafted, my family would
have starved to death. So my mother asked the Uzumasa ward mayor to seek
an exemption for him, and he was allowed to farm and pay a stipend of ricein lieu of serving as an army civilian employee.
Although we had one chō (2.45 acres) of farmland, a size double that of
the average farmer, we had to submit all the harvested rice to the government, while all the barley produced as a subsidiary crop at winter season was
taken by the landowner as rent. So our family income consisted of only ricebran, a byproduct after milling, and soybeans, planted on the dikes of the rice
	  * Suh Sung’s last lecture, delivered on January 19, 2011, at Ritsumeikan
University

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paddies. My family of nine had to collect grass roots and bark to survive.
After the escalation of the war, my father’s exemption from service wascanceled, and he ran away. When I was born, my mother was starving andcould not breastfeed at all. My mother fed me with rice water made frombroken rice grains and roasted soybeans that she chewed up before feedingme. Yet these foods were not easily digested by a newborn baby, so I
suffered severe diarrhea, became emaciated like a tree branch, and almostdied.
On August 15, 1945, my father secretly came home and helped with theweeding of the rice paddy. Hearing the news of Japan’s defeat in war, myparents kneeled down on the muddy ground and cried. It was the end of ourfamily starvation crisis. Later my parents said that it was as if a great wall infront of them had suddenly collapsed. If the war had lasted one more month,
I would have starved to death.
Two years before the war ended, when my grandmother was pregnant,she complained of abdominal pain one day and was suffering late at night. A
midwife in our rural region said, “The baby is breech. She needs an operation
at the University Hospital in Kyoto.” My grandmother was then carried on the
only truck available in Shūzan leaving for Kyoto. However, when the charcoal-fueled vehicle reached the Kasa mountain ridge near Shūzan, it stopped
as a result of engine failure, and my grandmother died on the cargo bed
before dawn. When my mother lived in Tango Yamada village, her sixteenyear-old cousin, who had been drafted as a railway-switch operator at Tango
Yamada station, was run over by a train and died. At the time, many Korean
people died in battlefields, mines, and factories. Under colonial rule, they
were forced to endure terrible hardships.
1.2 As a Korean Resident in JapanAt the time of Japan’s defeat in war in 1945, there were approximately
2.4 million Korean residents in Japan. According to conservative official estimates, about 800,000 of them had been carted off to forced labor. It is said
that in reality, however, 60 percent of them, 1.4 to 1.6 million Koreans, wereactually forcefully transferred. After the war, most of them went back to
Korea, and my grandfather, an uncle, and two aunts also left Japan andreturned to their hometown in Korea.
My family moved from Shūzan to Hanazono Konpoku-chō beside
Myoshinji Temple in Kyoto, where I went to Ōmuro Primary School. Later
we moved to Nakagyō, where I completed my primary and secondary education. Looking back at those days, I started to see myself as Korean when I
went to kindergarten. I felt that I was somewhat different from my neighbors.
When my father’s friends came over to our house, they spoke Korean, andExploring Human Rights in East Asia﻿

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when I got into fights with neighborhood children, they shouted “Chōsen[Korean]!” at me. In this way, my surroundings in Japan gradually made me
realize that I was a Korean.
There were four or five Korean children in every class in my primaryschool, and most of their families were so poor that they could not afford
textbooks. Sometimes teachers scolded them for not doing their homework. At
that time I thought it was shameful to be a Korean.
When I entered middle school, what bothered me most was the questionof my identity. I had come to notice the differences between myself andothers in daily-life culture, including such things as language and food. Mostof the time, the Japanese around me made me aware of my not being
Japanese. Back in those days most Japanese thought themselves superior to
Koreans and discriminated against us, owing to the influence of a history ofcolonial rule.
In April 1960, when I was a third-grader in middle school, the April 19
Student Uprising took place. This was a rebellion against the dictatorship ofthen South Korean President Syngman Rhee. Even though more than 200
students and youngsters, including primary- and middle-school students, were
killed in these demonstrations in Seoul, students continued their rebellious
campaign without giving in to the shooting by the police. These demonstrations ultimately led to the resignation and exile of President Rhee. Watching
the news on television, I was left wondering why South Korean middleschool students, almost the same age as me, participated in demonstrations
without being afraid of violent suppression.
In Japan around the same time, the biggest demonstrations in its history
occurred, opposing the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. The 1960s is called the“Golden Sixties” because so many Asian and African nations gained independence. Moreover, opposition to the Vietnam War grew and later evolved into
the international peace movement. During this time I was engaged in mymiddle-school, high-school, and college studies.1
1.3 The Student Movement
In 1964, when I visited South Korea for the first time, the Japan–South Korea
Talks were being held. The Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and theRepublic of Korea was signed the next year, in 1965. Up until then, although
Japan had been defeated in the war and had renounced its colonial occupationof Korea, it had neither officially acknowledged South Korea nor restored
1 Dare ni mo kokyō wa aru no da: Zai Nichi Chōsenjin to watashi だれにも故郷はあるものだ ―― 在日朝鮮人とわたし (Everyone Has a Hometown: Korean
Residents in Japan and Me) (Tokyo: Shakaihyōronsha, 2008).

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normal diplomatic relations with the country. So through the treaty, Japansought to terminate colonial rule and establish diplomatic relations with South
Korea. The negotiations also included discussion of fishery rights and thelegal status of Korean residents in Japan.
Yet the most important result of this treaty was to establish economic andmilitary relations between Japan and South Korea. Despite the Japan-U.S.
Security Treaty and the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States andthe Republic of Korea, it was difficult for Japan to directly establish military
relations with South Korea, as Japan had only its Self-Defense Forces, whichwere restricted by article 9 of its constitution. But lack of relations between
Japan and South Korea was inconvenient for the United States. Around thistime the Vietnam War had gradually escalated, and the South Korean government, responding to a U.S. government request, sent 50,000 to 60,000 troopsof the ROK Armed Forces to Vietnam, including troops from its Blue Dragon
and Fierce Tiger divisions. Furthermore, in Okinawa, under military occupation by the United States at the time, Japan played a role as a logistical basefor U.S. forces. B-52 bombers left from Okinawa and dropped bombs on
Vietnam. U.S. Navy Ships replenished food and water supplies, and its
servicemen recuperated in Japan. Under these circumstances, the U.S.
government needed military collaboration between Japan and South Korea,
and so eventually, with strong pressure from the United States, the Treaty on
Basic Relations between the two nations was signed.
Through this treaty, Japan, by legally terminating its colonial rule over
Korea, gained access to the Korean market, and South Korea could receive
money of celebration for establishment of diplomatic relations, to be used forits military government and economic development. While some Japaneseprotested against the treaty, the opposition movement in South Korea wasmuch stronger. Without an official apology from Japan for its colonial occupation, the treaty sought to conclude its colonial rule with the wishy-washy
language of Article 2 of the treaty. It reads “It is confirmed that all treaties
and agreements concluded between the Empire of Japan and the Empire of
Korea on or before August 22, 1910, are null and void.” Japan argued that
this language supported the view that the annexation of Korea had been
implemented legally, and that the annexation became invalid in 1965 whenSouth Korea was recognized as an independent state. South Korea, incontrast, claimed that the annexation was forced on Korea by Japanese military pressure, and that it had been invalid from the beginning. As for reparations, while having different perspectives, both sides finally reached acompromise through a muddled phrase about financial aid to Korea celebrating diplomatic normalization and totaling $500 million. This was broken
down into a $300 million grant and a $200 million assistance loan, without

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mentioning claim rights at all. This ambiguous settlement led to the current
problem of a different understanding regarding historical issues between thetwo sides.
In Japan at the time there was opposition against the Treaty on Basic
Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. Some people criticized it
as a new U.S.–Northeast Asian military alliance. Japan’s labor unions were
opposed to it because they thought that with diplomatic normalization, there
would be an influx of cheap Korean labor, which would cause wages to drop.
Other Japanese were opposed because they thought it would entrench theNorth-South Korean divide. Yet all of these arguments lacked a view on how
to resolve questions of responsibility relating to colonial occupation.
In March 1965, when I first visited South Korea, demonstrations against
the treaty started at the beginning of the new semester, and the government
cracked down by invoking the garrison decree on June 3. The garrison decree
is martial law limited to a specified region, and it allows the government
temporarily to suspend constitutional rights and gives the military judicial,administrative, and police powers. People violating the order were charged inmilitary tribunals, and armed forces were stationed at high-profile strategic
posts in Seoul City.
When I arrived near the campus of Seoul National University, students
were throwing stones at riot police, and the police were fighting back withtear-gas grenades. I too was affected by the tear gas. Next I went to Korea
University, in Seoul, and discovered that nearly 3,000 students in a scrum had
crashed with riot police out the school gate. I saw one student hit in the faceby a tear-gas grenade. He was bleeding, and other students in the frontline
carried him inside the university. Several days later, armed forces led by tanks
broke through the gate of Korea University and arrested students. This incident is known as the August 29 Army Intrusion on Campus.
With the police and armed forces occupying their schools, South Korean
students seemed to be shouldering a heavy historical burden. In those days
South Korea was truly a poor nation, and I realized that I had a rather
comfortable and easy life in Japan. I began to think of studying in South
Korea to help eliminate the suffering of these students by any means
possible.
When I was a high-school student, I engaged in activities to support theethnic identity of Korean residents in Japan by setting up the Korean HighSchool Student Association of Kyoto. And soon after entering university, I
joined a movement led by the Korean Student League opposed to the JapanKorea Talks. I began fully engaging in the student movement. In the summerof my first year in college, I staged a demonstration against the “humiliating
diplomacy” of Lee Dong-won, then South Korean secretary of foreign affairs.

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I was seized by police for not having my alien registration card. At
Tsukinowa police station, I was humiliated by a detective in charge of foreign
affairs who had once worked in Pyongyang as a detective. He said, “Do you
know what mong tong gooli [idiot] means?... Hmm. As a Korean, you don’teven understand the Korean language.” Former Japanese Imperial detectives
remained in the Public Safety Division or Foreign Affairs Police and clamped
down on Korean residents and South Korean refugees in Japan. Through thisexperience I witnessed a bit of the bloody history of suppression.
1.4

Studying in South Korea
In 1968 I entered Seoul National University. First and foremost, I wanted
to learn the Korean language. As I mentioned earlier, I developed my identity
as a Korean because of the Japanese around me. I knew nothing about
Korean language, history, or culture apart from some Korean foods, such as
kimchi (Korean pickled cabbage) and Korean barbecue. So I realized that I
had nothing in me by which I could proactively assert who I was. And I also
wanted to shoulder even a small portion of the Korean students’ struggles by
sharing their deep sufferings and pains.
In the Korean War, approximately 2 to 3 million people were killed, andmore than 10 million people were separated from their families by the border.
After the war, the North-South divide escalated, and both sides became more
hostile. In South Korea, an extreme anticommunist dictatorship emerged, andmany innocent people were slaughtered and jailed without legal due process.
It is estimated that more than 1 million civilians were killed around the timeof the Korean War. Later the militarist government ruled South Koreansociety with a huge military budget for the armed forces. I just wanted to dosomething to alleviate our extraordinary national tragedy, brought about by thedivision generated by the Cold War. Yet I was just a young and naive college
graduate and did not know much about how to realize this wish.
Just when I was about to become an assistant teacher, having completed
my master’s degree in sociology at Seoul National University Graduate
School, Military Security Command suddenly arrested me on April 18, 1971,
on suspicion of violating the National Security Act and other charges. Half ayear later, on October 22, I received a death sentence at my first trial, and on
December 7, 1972, I received life imprisonment at the second trial. My
verdict was finalized after an appeal had been turned down. In 1988 my life
imprisonment was commuted to a 20-year sentence, and on February 28,

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1990, after having spent 19 years in prison, I was finally released.2
1.5

Imprisonment and Beyond
During this time, I was subjected to extreme torture and ideologicalconversion. I also witnessed executions. Through this lengthy term in the poor
conditions of a jail cell, I realized the horror of state violence. Yet supported
by global campaigns demanding the release of political prisoners, I also
learned the importance of human-rights activism, which can counter suchstate violence.
Soon after my release, I went back to Japan, because the South Korean
government felt uncomfortable with my receiving so much attention from allover the world and wanted me to leave South Korea. Because of my particular experience of spending such a long time in prison, I received many
lecture requests from various organizations throughout Japan. Although thecampaigns demanding my release were centered in Japan, other global
human-rights organizations, including Amnesty International, were also
engaged in these efforts. I received invitations not only from Amnesty
International, but also from other American organizations involved in myrelease, so I went to the United States. In the fall of 1990, the year of myrelease, I went on a one-month trip, visiting Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Chicago, Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. During this time I got anoffer to become a visiting research fellow at the University of California,
Berkeley, and in 1991 I went to San Francisco, where I witnessed massdemonstrations against the First Gulf War. At that time I lived in Berkeley
and received many invitations to speak from American and European organizations. I toured around Europe for one and a half months, and later went toSouth America and Canada. Through these travels I obtained real experiences
relating to international human-rights activities and had an opportunity to be
involved in establishing a human-rights nonprofit organization, Stop Torturein Korea, at Berkeley.
1.6

International Symposium “The Cold War and State Terrorism inEast Asia”
In 1994 I came back to Japan and visited Taiwan. After a lecture in Taipei,
I visited a former prison for political prisoners, the remains of a politicalconcentration camp, Machangzheng (an execution site), and Liuzhangli city
cemetery (where political criminals were interred). There I witnessed East
2 For my experiences of arrest by Military Security Command and my subsequent
19-year imprisonment, see my Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South
Korea’s Gulag (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

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Asian state violence in the raw. My travels to places that experienced state
violence started in Taiwan, and I continued my journey to Okinawa, Jeju, andYanbian. Since this trip, I have striven to link the contemporary situation withthe history of political oppression in Taiwan and South Korea, and I have
tried to expose the oppression in this region in order to eliminate it. In sodoing, I have explored what East Asia is and who the East Asian people are.
East Asians have been ruled by colonization, the Cold War, and a system ofdivision. And to ensure a lasting peace in this region, I have struggled to
draw a road map for converting the U.S.-Japan-oriented regional ruling order,
which has been interspersed with wars, invasions, and state terrorism, to apeople-oriented regional order.3
Since I left prison, I have been interested in peace, human rights, andstate violence in East Asia, since Japan’s invasion, its colonial rule, its defeat
in the Pacific War, and Cold War history are deeply related to the division of
the Korean Peninsula, which decided my fate. And I have pursued these
topics because unification of the Korean Peninsula cannot be separated froma historical turnaround in East Asia. For Koreans, colonial occupation and thenation’s division are historical events that occurred in East Asia from the latenineteenth century to today, and modern Korean history is a part of modern
East Asian history.
In the East Asian region, Japan’s defeat should have resulted in theliberation of the Korean and Taiwanese people, but this result was suppressedby the start of the Cold War, and Taiwanese and Koreans were left at themercy of state terrorism, such as Taiwan’s White Terror during the 1950s, theJeju April 3 Incident, and massacres in Yeosu and Suncheon, South Korea. To
dismantle the Cold War structure, to settle past issues, and to liberate the East
Asian people, victims, researchers, and activists from Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, and Okinawa held a series of international symposia titled “The Cold
War and State Terrorism in East Asia.” Each symposium consisted of three
sections: witness, fieldwork, and research/analysis. Six international symposia
have been held in the following places: Taipei (1997) for the fiftieth anniversary of February 28 Incident, Jeju (1998) for the fiftieth anniversary of the
Jeju April 3 Incident, Okinawa (1998), Kwangju (2000) for the twentiethanniversary of Kwangju Massacre, Kyoto (2002), and Yeosu, South Korea(2002). One of the achievements of these symposia was the enactment inSouth Korea and Taiwan of the Truth and Compensation Act for State
Violence. In the movement for this act, I was involved in its proposal, estab-

3 See So Sun no Higashi Ajia heiwa kikō 徐勝の東アジア平和紀行 (Suh Sung’s
Peace Pilgrimage in East Asia) (Kyoto: Kamogawa Shuppan, 2011).

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lishment, and implementation.4
In around 2005 I started, together with other East Asian supporters, toprotest against the enshrinement of Korean and Taiwanese soldiers’ souls at
Yasukuni Shrine, since we think that collaboration and peace among thediverse nations of East Asia can be achieved only by overturning Japancentric regional hegemony, which has been deeply rooted in this region since
the Meiji era under the slogans of Asianism and the Greater East Asian
Co-prosperity Sphere. Overturning Japan-centric regional hegemony in East
Asia would mean true liberation of the people (i.e., independence from colonialism). I realized that the most important task for us is to protest against
Yasukuni Shrine in a movement seeking correct understanding and settlementof history, rather than in a lawsuit demanding the separation of religion andpolitics. The former Japanese imperial military regime glorified Japan’s war
and drafted Koreans and Taiwanese, who died as soldiers of the imperial
army. Even now the souls of these soldiers are forced to be honored as imperial soldiers through their enshrinement with Japanese soldiers at Yasukuni
Shrine. So we established Lighting Peace Candles for the Darkness of
Yasukuni to demand an end to the forced enshrinement of Korean andTaiwanese soldiers there. Since 2006 we have continued this Yasukuni movement as a movement about the right to live in peace, with the right to selfdetermination and freedom of thought.
1.7

A Hundred Years after Japan’s Annexation of Korea, “A Declarationof History, Human Rights, and Peace in East Asia”
Recently, in 2010, the hundredth-year anniversary of Japan’s annexationof Korea was covered by many newspapers, magazines, and broadcasts, andvarious organizations issued statements or declarations related to this event.
Though there were minor differences, the basic ideas claimed by these statements were as follows:• Japan had invaded Korea from the beginning of the modern era.
• Japan’s annexation of Korea was unjustifiable, and the Japan-Korea
Annexation Treaty was illegal.
• Owing to the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and theRepublic of Korea, assessment of the annexation treaty and Japan’scolonial rule have become ambiguous.
4 See Higashi Ajia no reisen to kokka terorizumu: Bei-Nichi chūshin no chiikichitsujo no haizetsu o mezashite 東アジアの冷戦と国家テロリズム――米日中心の地域秩序の廃絶をめざして (The Cold War and State Terrorism in East Asia:
Toward Elimination of the U.S.-Japan-Centered Regional Order) (Tokyo:
Ochanomizu Shobō, 2004).

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• Early implementation of the 2002 Japan–North Korea Pyongyang
Declaration is necessary to settle with North Korea over Japan’s colonial
occupation.
• In commemorating the one hundred years since Japan’s annexation of
Korea, the Japanese prime minister should declare the annexation treaty
illegal and invalid and settle past issues with a sincere apology.
Traditionally, discussion of the annexation of Korea has focused mainlyon the illegality of the annexation and subsequent treaty. The Japanese
government’s view, it has been said, has shifted from considering the annexation and treaty as legitimate to considering it unjustifiable but legal, whereas
the Korean side has continued to claim it as both unjustifiable and, in theoriginal context, illegal. The Korean government’s argument has two prongs.
First of all, Japan’s annexation of Korea was illegitimate, because it wasforced. International law during the age of imperialism should be denounced
as the law of aggressor takes all. Second, this treaty did not even comply withsuch defective international law, since its terms were defective, it lacked theemperor’s seal, and it was not ratified.
There is concern, however, that discussion on the hundredth anniversaryof the annexation could be trivialized by paying attention just to the legality
or illegality of the treaty. And there is a flaw in reasoning that laws madeduring the age of imperialism are justified if the ratification process waslegal. The legitimacy of such laws should be questioned because they were
established to enslave and discriminate against people in order to rule them.
For example, though Taiwan became Japan’s legal territory through theTreaty of Shimonoseki, in reality its people were sold out by their feudal
rulers’ agreement, and they knew nothing about the deal. For these reasons,and since there was no popular sovereignty at the time, the legitimacy of any
such treaty arbitrarily signed by autocratic rulers should be questioned.
In addition, discussion on the hundred-year anniversary did not fully
clarify the history of Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea. Japan’s aggression
began with the Invasion of Ganghwa Island in 1875, and substantive colonial
rule was already in place by the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. From Japan’s
standpoint, the annexation of Korea should not be trivialized as a mere ethnic
conflict. Instead, it should be positioned as one of a series of aggressions andadministrative rules on Hokkaido, Okinawa, and Taiwan since the beginningof the Meiji era, and it needs to be recognized in the much broader context ofworld history. On the hundredth anniversary, the annexation of Korea should
be considered from the universal viewpoint of denying colonial rule.
In 2001 the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance” was held in Durban, South Africa, andconcluded with the “Durban Declaration and Action Programs.” This epoch-

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making conference reviewed the previous 400 to 500 years of world history,
when Western imperialism ruled the world. It defined slavery and colonial
rule imposed by Western states as crimes against humanity. The Durban
Declaration defined the modern age as a period when so-called Western civilization ruled over so-called barbarianism, and it went on to point out that theWestern domination created discrimination and prejudice, which led to barbarous acts of slavery and colonial occupation. The declaration can be viewed
as the most significant event in the twenty-first century to question the origins
of today’s rule and discrimination, and to raise the issue of international
human rights. Since the conference was held in Africa, the emphasis, naturally, was on slavery. The issue of colonial rule was not mentioned in detail.
Rather, it was referred to in only two out of several hundred items on theagenda.
Inspired by the Durban Declaration, I decided to promote an East Asian
version created by citizens and asserting that a proper settlement of the pastis necessary to ensure collaboration and a peaceful future in East Asia.
Starting on this hundredth anniversary of Japan’s annexation of Korea, weshould acknowledge that East Asia has incurred tremendous damage as aresult of a century of Western aggression, war, and colonial rule. To rectify
matters, we need to realize a sincere settlement of the past—including apologies, compensation, and prevention of reoccurrence. I believe that Japan’s
responsibility for its past colonial rule should be looked at in a more
universal and historical context. For these reasons, I decided to establish “A
Declaration of History, Human Rights, and Peace in East Asia” as an East
Asian version of the Durban Declaration. I wanted to put this declaration out
there to raise questions about universal human rights. I am now planning toposition this declaration as a document sponsored by the United Nations,which should always be referred to whenever arguments arise regarding theEast Asian Community or cooperation in East Asia. First, we collected thedemands of nongovernmental organizations concerned with peace and humanrights in this region in order to create an action program. Then planning got
under way to hold a conference in September 2011 to issue an East Asia
Declaration, ten years after the Durban Declaration.

2 Exploring Human Rights in East Asia

2.1 Are Human Rights Universal?
After overturning autocratic rule, citizens obtained power and became
individuals with inalienable rights in modern nation-states. Basically, theconcept of human rights was created to assure the individual of protection
from the violence of state power, and the fiction of a social contract was
introduced to control state power. For a long time, human rights were consid-

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 4 2013ered a privilege of being protected as citizens under state sovereignty. Suchrights, however, were restricted to males of the privileged classes of Western
nations. Commoners, colonial subjects, and females were excluded from these“universal rights of human beings.”
Yet in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), it
was stipulated that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Thatis, human rights, based on transcending natural law, were claimed to inhere
universally in the individual per se. Because they are universal, they inevitably obtained a liberating feature as people pushed to eliminate restrictions to
specific groups. Thus, the concept of universal human rights contained within
it the germ of a mission to expand its horizon by continuously seeking therealization of rights among wider and wider groups. That mission was first to
eliminate discrimination inside the nation-state, then to do away withdiscrimination among nations and organizations, and finally to seek universal
human rights for all.
Though human rights have been claimed to be universal, human rights
have in fact lacked universality since the emergence of modern civil society.
When people speak of universal human rights, they are speaking of adeclared program that has yet to be realized. Throughout history up to thepresent, human rights have never been universal. Modern laws, especiallythose created in Western nations, are especially nonuniversal in nature,
because they have emerged under a violent regime of international law basedon the worldview that “civilization” is superior to “barbarianism.”
From the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860) on, Western imperial
powers became more prominent in East Asia. Under the pretext of advancing“civilization” over “barbarianism,” they forced unequal treaties on East Asian
nations through invasions. After going through the long era of aggression andcolonial rule, many nations in East Asia formally achieved independence after
the end of the Second World War, yet they failed to establish democracy andsystems that value human rights. In addition, East Asia was divided by thewall of the Cold War, and both Eastern and Western powers paid attention
only to their own superiority in relation to other nations. States advocateddemocracy and human rights merely as ideological demagogy. While theUnited States criticized socialist and nonallied nations for lacking freedom,human rights, and democracy, and even meddled in these nations to bringabout regime change, it also turned a blind eye toward dictatorships, suppression of human rights, and genocide committed by states within its own bloc,
or even encouraged these things.
In socialist nations, human-rights theory advocated people’s ultimate
liberation through class revolution. Hence in China, universal human rights
were denied on the basis of the theory of class dictatorship. In other East

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Asian nations, such as South Korea and Taiwan, their autocratic regimes,
under the guise of “anticommunism” and with the support of the UnitedStates, continuously and repeatedly slaughtered people and committed
human-rights abuses. In this region, it was only after the 1970s that theprocess of democratization began and human-rights issues started to draw
attention.
In East Asia, Japan has been considered an exemplary nation embodying
democracy and human rights. After the Second World War, its constitution
was revised to stipulate that sovereignty resided in the people, and the people
became citizens, rather than subjects. As a result, the Japanese have become
more aware of human rights. However, the concept of human rights has often
been understood only superficially, and many people have not achieved the
deeper understanding that human rights are a means to protect against state
violence. Under the Meiji Constitution, the Japanese people were subjects ina servile position, and even in the postwar Japanese constitution, provision for
the emperor is contained in chapter 1, even though the people are designatedas sovereign in article 1 and the “Rights and Duties of the People” areincluded in chapter 3 as fundamental sections of the constitution. This showsthat postwar Japan has not completely broken with the past, and that theJapanese have failed to proactively establish the modern notion of the individual by themselves. For this reason, the concept of human rights is not fully
developed in Japan. After the Second World War, the United States, which
occupied Japan, revised Japan’s constitution, putting more emphasis on peaceand democracy as basic features, and dismantled Japan’s militarism, toprevent Japan from threatening its security again. It can be argued that theessential notion of human rights is not fully shared by the Japanese, because
the new constitution was established without their own violent struggles toseize sovereignty.
Even though the concept of human rights has continuously improved andexpanded in substance, the notion of human rights has always been a nonuniversal concept built into the Western idea of civilization, according to which
the West dominates the world order. Especially in the context of modern East
Asian history, where state violence has been prominent in wars, aggression,colonial rule, and massacres, what people valued most were such basic rights
as the right to life and the right to live in peace and security. Even issues
from everyday life, such as discrimination against Koreans in Japan, have asa background Japan’s invasion and colonial rule, which was based on aunidimensional worldview of civilization versus barbarianism. Without realizing this squarely, people will find it impossible to acquire universal humanrights from rulers and oppressors.

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Civilization and Barbarianism
Since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which was based on theories ofstate independence and equality and on noninterference in internal affairs, theworld system of sovereign states was gradually established, and this neworder created new international relations while undermining the medieval
European hierarchical order. It also opened the door to a modern civil society,ruled by the people, who are independent and equal. However, independent
sovereignty, after Westphalia and up to the present, was a privilege given only
to those nations that met the standards of being “civilized,” and was notallowed to those regarded as “barbaric” or “uncivilized.” Universal humanrights neither existed nor were allowed in such “barbaric” nations.
At the time, the mission of “civilization” was to cultivate the “barbarians,”and Western nations’ invasions, dominance, and conversions of the “barbaric”
world were even regarded as a mission. So what is civilization? In general,
civilization is general prosperity based on the latest science, technology, andliterature. But if it flourishes on the basis of aggression, dominance, andexploitation of “barbarianism,” such “civilization” itself should be calledbarbaric.
In 1989, at the two-hundredth commemorative symposium of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in Paris, one African
representative reportedly pointed out that over the past 200 years, this declaration has never crossed over the Mediterranean to Africa. Even after Western
society obtained the concept of human rights through peoples’ revolutions,
universal human rights were never extended beyond the wall of civilization,and even with Western propaganda and cultivation, human rights have neverbeen universalized.
In addition, even after scholars of civilization theory criticized the dominance of Western civilization and took a relativist standpoint when discussing
various cultures, Samuel P. Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations and theRemaking of World Order (1996), claimed that Western culture is superior.
Even today, when some scholars consider the notion of civilization to be atheory of hegemony pursued by imperialism, violence at the Guantanamo Bay
detention camp and at Abu Ghraib prison could not be stopped, because thisviolence was justified as necessary to further the three values of freedom,democracy, and the market economy. Steeped in these values, the unidimensional worldview of civilization versus barbarianism is still deeply rooted andprevents universal human rights from spreading to the “barbarians” bylabeling them as “terrorists” or “rouge states,” etc. Even today, aggression,
domination, and human-rights violations have been justified in the name ofExploring Human Rights in East Asia﻿

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civilization.5
While Western nations have enjoyed special privileged positions as dominant players in the world, they have criticized non-Western nations for not
meeting Western standards of “universal human rights” and have used thiscircumstance as a means to control them. In reaction, the rest of the world
has criticized the Western theory of universal human rights.
In 1994 a controversy surrounding Asian notions of human-rights theory
erupted at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. Asian nations
asserted that human rights accrue in stages and that they are culturally relative, and Western nations fiercely criticized this stance by stressing theuniversality of human rights. Admittedly, socialism, Confucian culture, andcollectivism in Asian nations have a restrictive totalitarian nature, whichmight conflict with freedom for individuals. The Asian view that othernations may not interfere in human-rights issues in Asian nations because ofnational sovereignty, based on experiences of being colonized and invaded, isby no means a universal human-rights theory. Rather, it is more like propaganda to defend the administrations of Asian states. Yet Western criticism of
East Asian human rights is also a kind of propaganda, in this case, an advocacy of regime change, rather than a pure effort to realize universal humanrights.
2.3 What Is East Asia?
East Asia is not just a geographical classification on the world map. The
Chinese writer Lu Xun wrote, “For actually the earth had no roads to begin
with, but when many people pass one way, a road is made” (“ 故郷 ” [My Old
Home]). In the beginning, the word “Asia” referred just to Asia Minor. With
the expansion of the Western world, the concept of Asia also expanded.
Starting from the Near East, it eventually encompassed Korea and Japan.
During the past 500 years of modernity, with the aggression and dominationof strong Western powers, the regional distinctions of Latin America, Africa,and Asia were shaped. Thus, Asia is a concept of a historical and politicalregional order created by the aggression and domination of Western Europe.
Since the Meiji period, Japan had two different choices in seeking selfreliance and independence against overwhelming pressure from Western
Europe, and these two alternatives were not clearly contradictory, but ratherinterdependent and complementary. One path, the path of Asianism, was tocollaborate with other East Asian nations against Western empires. The other5 See Abe Hiroki 阿部浩己, Kokusai hō no bōryoku o koete 国際法の暴力を超えて (Beyond the Violence of International Laws) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,2010).

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path, that of Westernization, was to oppress other East Asian nations byemulating Western imperialism. Eventually Japan chose to join the “civilized”
nations of the West by establishing its foundation on aggression and domination of other East Asian nations, while saying good-bye to its bad Asian
friends. Hoisting the slogan of “cultural enlightenment” and resorting toviolence, Japan sought Western nations’ recognition as a “civilized nation” by
thoroughly mimicking them. In the Meiji era, Japan’s main objective in its
diplomacy was revision of the unequal treaties, and to realize this objective,
Japan had to show its “true ability.” Building an alliance with Britain, anation antagonistic toward Russia in its global strategy, Japan, by winning
victories in the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, obtained
control over the Korean peninsula. And only after being recognized as a“civilized” nation as a result of these victories did Japan’s wish for treaty
revision became possible. Only one year after its annexation of Korea, Japanrose briskly as a small empire in East Asia.
Ironically, through aggression and domination Japan transformed thenotion of Asia, first created by the West, into the idea of a Japan-centric
regional order. Just as Japan produces superior goods by copying andimproving foreign articles, so Japan created its own version of Asia by modifying the Western concept of Asia. As Professor Kokubun Ryōsei of Keio
University says, “Asia is Japan.” To convert a Sino-centric East Asian order
into a Japan-centric East Asian regional order, Japan reconstructed the notionof Asia. But Japan used the term “Asianism,” instead of the blatant“Japanism,” to avoid raising suspicions. Thereafter, Japan, a small empire,promoted regional control to establish the Empire of Japan, while hiding its
ambition under the name “Asia,” “East Asia,” or “Greater East Asia.”
However, the true nature of Japan’s “Asianism” became unveiled with theGreater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and the Greater East Asia Holy War.
2.4 The Cold War and State Terrorism
After Japan’s war defeat in 1945, efforts to dismantle Japan’s militarismand settle the system of colonial rule were interrupted by the start of the Cold
War. As a result, the East Asian region was realigned under U.S. domination.
Since Japan supported the U.S. strategy in East Asia and could restore relationships with (pro-Japanese) former colonial-rule collaborators with thestrong backing of enormous American force, Japan retained its influence in alarge part of the former Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, and as aresult, East Asians could not fully liberate themselves.
The Cold War was a system under which the United States and the former
Soviet Union established rival global blocs not only in terms of politics andthe military, but also in terms of ideology, economy, society, and culture, andExploring Human Rights in East Asia﻿

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they rivaled with each other across the board. Furthermore, the Cold War
froze the decolonization process in East Asia. Thus, national liberation in East
Asia was thwarted, even though it had been the fervent wish of East Asians
since the Opium Wars. U.S. interests in military strategy crippled the processof dismantling Japanese militarism in East Asia. This ensured that Japan
would remain a major American collaborator, which dampened East Asians’
enthusiasm for national liberation. What resulted were raging struggles andcivilian genocide in South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asian nations.
In East Asia, the forefront of the Cold War, a wall of division was createdacross the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, and Vietnam, and undermartial law, extreme state violence spread extensively. In South Korea, an
authoritarian regime continued for almost half a century, from both before towell after the Korean War. In China, after the civil war, the Chiang Kai-shek
regime moved to Taiwan and ruled there under martial law for as long as 37
years. Vietnam experienced a 40-year-long war.
In these nations, many perished as a result of state violence. In South
Korea, it is said that as many as 1 million civilians were killed by state
violence during the Korean War, the North-South division, and the National
Security Act regime, from the Jeju April 3 Incident to the Kwangju Massacre.
In Taiwan, tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in the February 28
Incident and the subsequent White Terror of the 1950s. These victims werelong dishonored as “insurgents,” “dissidents,” “traitors,” and “Reds.”
In the 1980s in Taiwan and South Korea, gross human-rights violations
through state violence were eventually raised as a central issue of protest
against dictatorships in the course of the democracy movement. And thecollapse of the Soviet Union and U.S.-Soviet rivalry in 1989 gave momentum
to this movement. Then the movement advocating restoration of honor andcompensation for state violence emerged. In South Korea, restoring honor andgiving compensation to the families of Kwangju Massacre victims made asignificant breakthrough during the Cold War, and as a result, the Special Act
on the Restoration of Honor of Persons Involved in the Geochang Incident
was passed in 1996. Although the Law for the Restoration of Honor andCompensation for Civilians Massacred before and after the Korean War
remains unsettled, the Special Act for the Investigation of the Jeju April 3
Incident and for the Restoration of the Honor of Victims was enacted in
December 1999. Concurrently, the Act on the Restoration of the Honor of andCompensation for Persons Engaged in the Democratic Movement and theSpecial Act on the Investigation of Suspicious Deaths came into effect in2000. In Taiwan, the Law for Compensation for the February 28 Incident wasenacted in 1995, and the Act for Compensation of Victims of 50 Years ofWhite Terror passed the Diet in 1998.

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The above are examples of progress in East Asia in receiving delayed
justice and settling the past. However, it is problematic that Japan has notproceeded to settle its past, and this has resulted in the following issues:• Japan’s problematic historical perceptions• The controversy over history textbooks• Wartime comfort women• The forced enshrinement of Korean and Taiwanese soldiers at Yasukuni
Shrine• Carting off Koreans to forced labor• The Korean massacre after the Great Kanto Earthquake
2.5

Conclusion
In view of the above understanding and historical course of human rights,
one can see that human rights in East Asia differ from Western “universal
human rights.” Thus, to expose the false understanding of “universal humanrights” and to realize true human rights in East Asia, we need to rid ourselvesof so-called “universal human rights” under Western hegemonic control. And
in East Asia, we also need to rid ourselves of a Japan-centric understandingof Asia and reform the regional order. The most important task is todismantle the order of domination that has continued over the past 500 years
and to realize true human rights by renouncing the colonial past and questioning Japan’s and Western nations’ responsibilities for their imperialist
pasts.
In the meantime, the most significant challenge ahead of us is to end thestate of conflict on the Korean Peninsula that has continued since the Korean
War and establish a system of peace there. Next, we should investigate andrestore the honor of innocent victims of past state violations of human rights
by Japan, whether they occurred inside and outside Japan. To achieve thesegoals, we should first establish a clear international consensus on the idea thatcolonial rule is a crime against humanity.