Published on November 2, 2019.
Based on an essay by South Korean attorney Kim Ki-soo, this article examines how comfort women statues and former worker statues function as devices that impose a “fabricated uniform memory” on South Korean society.
It argues that when illegally erected statues are left in place by the authorities and politicians attend their unveiling ceremonies, society crosses a watershed toward totalitarianism, in which a single ideology rules above the law.

November 2, 2019.
Why does erecting statues lead to totalitarianism?
Because statues are erected illegally and then left standing.
That is one step toward totalitarianism, and that is the watershed.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
A Fabricated Uniform Memory.
Even during the Park Geun-hye administration, comfort women statues and the like were erected one after another, so I do not think that statues are increasing simply because the current Moon Jae-in administration is left-wing.
After all, it is not the government but private groups that are erecting the statues.
However, South Korean society as a whole is seized by an obsession that pro-Japanese elements have not yet been liquidated and must be liquidated.
I think that being seized by that obsession is a tendency toward totalitarianism.
The force erecting the statues is a left-wing labor union called the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, but by erecting the statues they are gaining benefits.
Why does erecting statues lead to totalitarianism?
Because statues are erected illegally and then left standing.
That is one step toward totalitarianism, and that is the watershed.
In that respect, the statue in Daejeon is a violation of the law.
Yet despite the fact that the statue was erected in violation of the law, the mayor and the chairperson of the city council attended the unveiling ceremony.
What is totalitarianism?
It is when a single ideology controls everything.
In the case of the former Soviet Union, it was the ideology of revolution.
What is happening in South Korea now is that one idea, namely that “pro-Japanese elements must be liquidated,” is trying to rule society beyond the law.
This is totalitarianism, and that very thing has happened in Daejeon.
That is why I see it as having crossed the watershed toward totalitarianism.
On the other hand, comfort women statues are also being erected in the United States.
That may not violate American law, but by erecting statues, they provoke Japanese people, and anti-Korean sentiment among Japanese people rises.
The purpose is thereby to strengthen the framework of liquidating pro-Japanese elements in South Korea.
In other words, these are not statues for Koreans living abroad, but statues for provoking Japanese people.
In the United States, there are also statues of Lincoln and Washington, but these honor those men.
However, comfort women statues and former worker statues, in addition to being intended to provoke Japanese people, have become tools for injecting a mistaken historical understanding into young Koreans who do not know that era, by reproducing pain and making them feel anger and resentment.
In South Korea, there is a historical view that more than one hundred years ago, Japan forcibly stepped into the beautifully developing Joseon dynasty and trampled the buds of its autonomous development.
It is a historical view that says South Korea could have achieved an even more wonderful modernization if only Japan had not entered, and what lies behind it is xenophobia.
At the end of the Yi dynasty, Daewongun spoke of “defending orthodoxy and rejecting heterodoxy,” meaning national seclusion and expulsion of foreigners, and such xenophobic thinking lies behind the present installation of “requisitioned worker” statues.
The workers at that time went to Japan in order to earn money, but all such elements are excluded, and it is said only that they suffered like slaves.
This is an assertion made possible by xenophobia.
The “fabricated memory” being injected into the South Korean people is in fact only one memory.
It is a memory that does not allow the existence of other memories and does not allow objections.
That itself is totalitarianism, and it is dangerous.
Precisely because it is a fabricated memory, objections are not permitted.
Not only in historical recognition, but also in the Moon administration, there are various signs that it is aiming at totalitarianism.
The Constitution states that “the people have the right to pursue happiness.”
That right to pursue happiness should be the right of each individual, but the administration has adopted a policy based on the idea that “the state will give happiness to individuals,” and that it will give the people the happiness created by the state.
That too is totalitarianism and uniformism.
A large budget is being poured into something called “community care,” which provides support for the elderly and for cognitive issues, but it is based on the idea that the state will bind individuals to the community, or local area, and provide uniform happiness.
In this policy too, tendencies toward totalitarianism can be seen.
The most important element of fascism is “binding human thoughts into one,” and I think it is extremely dangerous, especially among thoughts, to try to make “views of past history” into one.
This article continues.