ABSTRACT
If there is one country in East Asia whose very existence and raison d’être is predicated on unresolved historical grievance it has to be North Korea, often described as a “guerrilla state” or a “partisan state” because the historical experiences of the anti-Japanese, antifascist partisans who fought against Japan in the 1930s, and the myths built upon them, are at its core; the regime’s first leader was one on whose head the Japanese authorities had posted a large price, and his son and successor, seventy years on, still calls on the people to model themselves on the spirit of his father and the partisans of the 1930s. In Europe, the Franco-Prussian War and the First and Second World Wars and Cold War have long been consigned to history: studied in textbooks, commemorated in inclusive ceremonies, dramatized in film and literature and as much part of a long-gone era as the Punic or Napoleonic wars; not so in East Asia, where the wounds of imperialism, colonialism, war and Cold War remain fresh.
