What is history? Famous and wise men have time and time again pointed out the various problems with history. For example, Voltaire once said, “History is the lie commonly agreed upon,” implying there exists an unspoken agreement that history is not always reliable or truthful. He also suggested that history could be fabricated by those who wield political power. Indeed, it is well known that history is written by the victors and rulers who have power. As a result, there may be missing pages in the official record, deliberately left out by dictators or conspirators. As Michel Foucault aptly pointed out, truth can be forged by the collaboration of knowledge and power. 

Voltaire was not alone in distrusting history. Ambrose Bierce, a famous American novelist, once wrote, “History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.” Henry Ford said, “History is more or less bunk.” Peter Geyl. has also commented insightfully, “History is an argument without end.”

In his celebrated book, “What Is History?” E. H. Carr also discusses the bias of historians and the problem of moral judgments in history. He wrote: “The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which is very hard to eradicate.” Carr perceived that history is not free from historians’ subjective viewpoints and perspectives. Furthermore, politicians and patriots, too, often intentionally misinterpret or distort history for political gain. Not realizing the complex and biased nature of history production, students are easily brainwashed by history books and teachers, and believe that the facts they learn are the absolute truth. When they encounter a different version of history, therefore, they become baffled, upset and even furious.

When I gave a talk at the State University of New York in Buffalo a few weeks ago, I briefly mentioned the Korean War at the end of my talk. I was compelled to do so, because among the audience were professor Neil Schmitz, who is working on a book on modern Korea, and professor Cristanne Miller who grew up with an adopted Korean brother. I mentioned the invasion of North Korea, the Incheon landing of the U.N. troops, the Chinese intervention and the truce. I did not foresee any problems whatsoever, because those are the historical facts I learned at school and personally experienced as a little boy. Besides, I did not try to insert my own interpretation of the historical events; I just narrated the facts I knew.

Evidently, however, my talk made some Chinese visiting scholars in the audience uneasy. Later, I heard that a Chinese scholar couple, offended by my presumably biased opinion of the Korea War, complained to an American professor, asserting that it was China, not the United Nations, that saved Korea from Western aggression. Such a statement may ring true to North Koreans, but not to South Koreans. Yet the Chinese scholars could not accept a South Korean’s version of the Korean War, which was radically different from what they had learned in China. Obviously, it did not occur to them that in the eyes of South Koreans, the Chinese intervention decisively hampered the unification of the Korean Peninsula. After all, history can be perceived differently by different peoples and countries.

I am not implying that I was right and the Chinese scholar couple was wrong. My point is that history can always be controversial and subject to different interpretations. As Carr points out, historians must choose from a vast array of information in order to tell a story. Choosing, however, is essentially arbitrary. Politicians, too, often distort historical events and facts to promote ideological agenda.

Indeed, history can easily turn into a battlefield for ugly ideological fights. The right-wing Park Chung-hee administration (1961-79), for example, ruthlessly persecuted the families and relatives of former Communist collaborators during the Korean War. The left-wing Roh administration (2003-08) did the same thing, only on the opposite side; left-wing politicians used history to condemn and prevail over their political foes. Like a modern-day witch hunt, they hunted down their political opponents’ ancestors and published a huge list of people who were pro-Japanese during Korea’s colonial era.

It was George Orwell who once said, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Knowing this, Korean left-wing politicians are very good at using history as a powerful ideological weapon to subdue their opponents. As for right-wing politicians, they do not seem to have a sense of the importance of history; they control neither the past nor the present, thereby hopelessly losing their control of the future as well.

When it comes to history, there is no such thing as the absolute truth. There will always be another version. The moment we realize it, we will stop being self-righteous and overconfident of our knowledge of the past. That is absolutely one of the most valuable lessons we can learn from history.

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon, a professor of English at Seoul National University, is editor of the literary quarterly “21st Century Literature.” ― Ed.