What does it mean to have a change of power in the Republic of Korea?

Quite disturbingly, it means that the most prestigious medical facility in the nation rewrites the death certificate for a civic activist who died after being hit by police water cannon during a violent demonstration. It also means that the head of the National Police Agency publicly apologizes to the family of the dead more than 19 months after the incident and nine months after his death.

When the Seoul National University Hospital announced on Sept. 25, 2016 that Baek Nam-gi, a dissident farmer, died of “stoppage of heartbeat from an illness,” instead of attributing the death to an external cause, many medical professionals as well as lay people expressed doubt and suspected influence from the outside. Groups of medical students and doctors issued statements denouncing what they believed to be an untruthful death certificate.

The family of the dead, refusing to accept the document indicating death from illness, demanded in January the SNU Hospital correct the death certificate and filed a civil suit to force the hospital to pay compensation for the wrong diagnosis. After a while, SNUH asked its ethics committee to review the case and the panel requested the doctor who had originally written the death certificate correct the paper. The doctor who still is a resident at the hospital complied.

What then forced the hospital’s leaders to change their mind after long ignoring public criticisms and pleas from the family of the dead? Was there a new autopsy to find the truth? No: Baek was cremated and interred in the Mangwol-dong Cemetery in Gwangju. Offering a possible explanation is the fact that there was a change of power in the meantime from a conservative to a liberal government through a snap presidential election in May.

If there really is causality between the launching of the Moon Jae-in government and the national university hospital’s admission of a mistake, we realize that politics truly is a powerful thing. The top university hospital has now relinquished the great public trust it had so long enjoyed by rewriting a death certificate it had issued to satisfy the wishes of power.

There was more. The day after the SNUH announced the correction of Baek Nam-gi’s death certificate, National Police Agency Superintendent Lee Chul-sung made a public apology to Baek’s family as well as to the people of the nation over the police causing the fatal injury to the dissident farmer.

He furthermore apologized for the deaths of Pak Jong-cheol and Lee Han Yeol 30 years ago. Pak, an SNU student, died while being tortured in a police interrogation room and Lee from Yonsei University was hit by a grenade fired by police during a pro-democracy demonstration against Chun Doo-hwan’s authoritarian rule.

Lee has headed the NPA since August last year and is credited for peacefully handling the candlelight demonstrations that gathered hundreds of thousands of protesters to the center of Seoul on every weekend from the late autumn of 2016. His belated apology last week may be inevitable because the SNU Hospital’s admission of an “external cause” meant police were responsible for the death of Baek.

The timing of his apologies for the deaths of Pak and Lee on behalf of the entire police force ex post facto, however, needs some examination. His police chief’s personal conscience should probably be intolerant of the wrong exercise of state power that left the two young university students dead, but he may have felt it unnecessary to express this belief in his official capacity while he was serving under a conservative government. So, he had to wait 10 months until the change of power, I guess.

Reports have it that the Blue House decided to retain Lee until he finishes his two-year tenure for the sake of organizational stability of the police force. This could spawn speculation that the police chief made the mea culpa with regard to the deaths of Baek and the two students in return for the favor. Anyway, there is a change of power and we are hearing a different music from a different band. Yet, I still have reservations about having the three cases on the same line of the bloody path to democracy. Baek was a determined activist from his youth: He was expelled from college and was jailed for his protests against dictatorship and he later joined rural resistance movements as a member of the Catholic Farmers League. He continued his civic activities even after the nation underwent democratic reforms in 1987.

On the night of Nov. 14, 2015, Baek had joined a large-scale anti-government demonstration of farmers and workers, which the authorities determined was an illegal, violent event. Protesters attacked riot police with sticks, metal pipes and ladders while some, including Baek, tried to overturn police buses using ropes bound to them. Police directly fired the water cannon at Baek, who fell to the ground.

Student protesters in 1987 at times acted violently throwing rocks and firebombs at the police. But I would allow different standards of judgment applied to those whose single goal was the restoration of democracy and to the protesters after 1987 whose objectives were diverse and partial according to the interests of participating groups.

The people power ended the Chun Doo-hwan regime because it was undemocratic. Many years later, Park Geun-hye was ousted because she was incompetent. Dissident groups joined in the candlelight demonstrations through the winter but it was the power of the democratic system that resolved the situation.

People who enjoy democracy in the Republic of Korea today owe a great deal to Pak Jong-cheol, Lee Han-yeol and many others who sacrificed themselves in the long fight against dictatorship. As for Baek Nam-gi, I would rather not regard him as one of the martyrs of democracy but one who benefitted from their sacrifice like all of us today.

Change of power in Korea also means giving up the state compilation of a national history textbook, considering destroying dykes built in major rivers during the Lee Myung-bak administration and abolishing special-purpose high schools for the sake of equality in education. After the announcements by the Seoul National University Hospital and National Police Agency last week, I wonder how many more denials of the past or reversals are in order in the days ahead.

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By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He also formerly worked as managing editor of The Korea Times. – Ed.