Shame is a poor archivist: Korea's unfinished reckoning with the past

Every family undergoes a process of editing its own narrative, and mine was no exception. My family had to remove certain aspects, including a collaborator, a disappearance, and a child who was sent abroad and quietly erased from history. When actress Ha Young discovered this summer that her great-grandfather's name was listed on a 1916 roster of a pro-Japanese organization, I read the news from Denmark with a sense of detachment.

My own great-great-grandfather, Lee Ha-young, is now on Korea's official list of pro-Japanese collaborators. The conversation quickly expanded, reigniting a contentious national discussion about inherited shame, family memory, and lives intertwined with survival, complicity, and loss.

Standing outside the social pressures that continue to shape how many Korean families discuss collaboration, secrecy, and adoption, I have come to view shame not merely as a personal burden but as a force that influences what is preserved, what is altered, and what remains unsaid. Like Lee In-jik and Ahn Sang-ho, my ancestor navigated a tumultuous era.

Born in poverty in the 1880s, Lee Ha-young gained proficiency in English from American missionary Horace Allen and eventually became the personal interpreter for King Gojong.