CONFERENCE: "A Reconsideration of the Japanese Annexation of Korea from the Historical and International Law Perspectives"
David McCann
On November 15-17, 2001, the Korea Institute hosted a conference, the third of a series of meetings, on "A Reconsideration of the Japanese Annexation of Korea from the Historical and International Law Perspectives." The Asia Center and the Reischauer Center for Japanese Studies provided generous logistical and other support.
The project had several matters to consider. First were the claims and counterclaims regarding the actual legality of the annexation itself. New documentary discoveries suggest that the agreement of annexation was reached under duress; that the Korean rule, Kojong, did in fact protest the annexation; and that agreements reached prior to the 1910 annexation were similarly flawed. International law might now reach a finding, on this basis, that all of the events and actions during the 1910-1945 occupation of Korea were illegal, and Japan therefore does owe some form of compensation, if not an apology, for what happened. But according to James Crawford, of the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law, judgments must be reached according to the practices in effect at the time. There seemed, in the end, to be little ground for agreement regarding the issue of the legality of the annexation. Despite M.I.T. Professor John Dower’s moving exhortation, the conference participants did not pursue the issuance of a statement regarding the annexation and the aftermath.
Professor John Van Dyke, of the University of Hawaii, gave a paper on the current claims and counter-claims regarding the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands. The example was most instructive, and suggested that continuing negotiations between Korean and Japan, as between Hawaii and the United States, should be pursued.
Anthony Carty, University of Derby, offered archival materials from British government files of letters and reports from Korea during the period just before, during, and after the annexation. British embassy officials seemed to have reached the conclusion that the Japanese take-over was a fait accompli, and that there was little or nothing in the form of popular or other noticeable protest against it at the time. Professor Carty’s paper suggested to this observer, at least, that it would be worth the effort to pursue the issue of Korean popular feelings about the annexation, rather than continuing to worry the bone of official government records and archival materials.
The papers and materials from the conference will be published through a website at Seoul National University through Professor Yi Tae-jin’s good offices. What, then, had been accomplished? Perhaps most simply and significantly, scholars from Japan and Korea, and from both the Republic of Korea and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, had engaged in productive discussions over the year-long course of the meetings, and that other such meetings and exchanges offered promise, on this and other issues. Even on such relatively well studied topics as this one, there are documentary materials yet to be discovered, assessed, and brought into the scholarly discourse; and there are many different types of materials, such as records of popular opinion as reflected in the British embassy records, that could be pursued as well. We might also reflect again on John Dower's call for reflections and statements from the scholarly academic community on subjects having political implications.
