The Nation Exorcised: The Historiography of Collaboration in South Korea

The cloak of silence surrounding collaboration in South Korea was lifted in the 1980s as part of the wider political struggle for democratization. Initially, the discourse on collaboration was caught in the same nationalist paradigm as the state-sanctioned narrative it sought to undermine. By the late 1990s, with democracy firmly established and a new, less-politicized generation of historians entering the field, the historiography of collaboration moved beyond facile incriminations and judgments toward a more comprehensive understanding of this delicate issue. Historical understanding does not, however, resolve the enduring demand for (moral) justice.