Korea Times, South Korea
July 29 2005
Recent Books
Genocide
Choi Ho-gun;
Chaeksesang Publishing:
448pp.,
22,000 won
According to the civic group Genocide Watch, around 175 million lives
were taken in mass killings in the past 100 years. The term of
genocide was first used by the Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin
(1900-1959) in a book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1940),¡¯¡¯ to
describe the systemic massacre of an ethnic group or race.
Choi, a professor at Busan National University of Education, analyzes
the various types of genocide that have occurred and categorizes them
into frontier _ for example, the American Indians and Tasmanian
Aboriginals _ Nazi-related, racial _ the Armenians or Bosnians _
religious and genocide in the name of revolution, for example, the
killing of Russians or Cambodians, and colonial _ Algerians, Rwandans
and East Timorese.
Choi also writes that the South Korean government¡¯s suppression of
Cheju residents in the late 1940s is tantamount to genocide and
suggests measures for the prevention of such massacres.