Ex-president`s son takes legal action against claim of Japanese collaboration

By Kim Boram
SEOUL, Nov. 3 (Yonhap) -- The son of late former President Park Chung-hee filed
for an injunction to have his father's name removed from a new list of
collaborators with the Japanese colonial government to be announced this weekend,
court officials said Tuesday.
The Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities said it will release on
Sunday three books bearing the names of some 4,300 Korean nationals who the
institute says were identified as having cooperated with Japan before and during
its colonial occupation of Korea from 1910-45.
The list is known to include the late president, who was commissioned as a second
lieutenant in the Japanese army in 1944 after he transferred from a military
institute in Manchuria to the Japanese military academy two years earlier.
According to officials from the Seoul Northern District Court, Park Ji-man, the
only son of the late president and brother of former chairwoman of the ruling
Grand National Party, Park Geun-hye, requested that the court suspend publication
of the books, denying that his father served in the Japanese army.
"He worked for the Manchurian military, not in the Japanese army, and did not
participate in eliminating Korean independence fighters," the son said in a
statement submitted to the court. "The inclusion of his (father's) name in the
list defames my father, in disregard of his contributions to the country."
The institute, however, refuted the claims and said that it will publish the
books as scheduled.
"Manchuria was occupied by the Japanese at that time, thus the Manchurian
military was part of the Japanese army. And he graduated from the Japanese
military academy," said the institute.
Descendants of a journalist suspected of having written poems and stories
praising the Japanese annexation of Korea also took legal action against the
publication, according to the court.
Jang Ji-yeon, who died in 1921, had once been hailed for his poetry decrying the
treaty of 1905 that made Korea a protectorate of Japan, but was later criticized
for collaborating with the Japanese government after the annexation in 1910.
Jang's descendants claimed that the writings were meant to be read as satire,
subtly berating Japan through words of praise.
The institute rebutted the argument, saying that not all of Jang's writings can
be construed as such.
brk@yna.co.kr
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