[Lim Woong] What Korea still owes its patriots of 1945

Every Aug. 15, South Korea pauses to mark National Liberation Day, the anniversary of the day in 1945 when 36 years of Japanese colonial rule finally came to an end. For decades, Koreans were forced to take Japanese names, bow at Japanese shrines and endure the colonial exploitation of their labor and natural resources. Leaving the past behind, liberation sounds like a clean break. Yet nothing about what followed was clean, and the way we observe the day today reveals as much about our present d