과거청산의 위기와 과거사정리 관련 위원회의 미래지향적 가치

Abstract

This article diagnoses the current phase of works for past liquidation and defines the reality of the crisis of transitional justice realization, and is to establish a future-oriented nature of the liquidations in Korea. The duly eighteen commissions acts to clear the past during the last hundred years in modern Korean history were filed by the negotiation and comprise of the ruling and opposition parties in the past fifteen years. Some accomplishments to get the truth and restoration were made. For example, President of Republic of Korea Roh Moo-Hyun apologized for mass killings of Jeju Islanders October 2003 and Chief Justice apologized last year for the unjust rulings handed down during Korea’s authoritarian past and pledged. As the New President Lee Myung-Bak’s came to power, they tried to dissolve sixteen commissions related to clearing up the past incidents in Korea and then to merge some of them and finally to stop the activities of the commissions. Many of the victims’ families over the country cried out for continuation of the investigation. Few must have known that there were as many as legally eighteen(18) independent commissions working to establish the truth about the mysterious death, torture, and especially the mass killings of civilians about the time of the Korean War by Korean and U. S soldiers, police, rightists, or terrorists. Some groups like ultra rightists enjoyed the situation of stopping the commissions' investigation of truth. In this regard Korean community should strive for the future oriented character of the Truth and Reconciliation apparatus and activities. There is no democratic development without rule of law and realization of social justice.