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When he was a young man, former U.S. President Bill Clinton joined in the antiwar campaign and evaded conscription for the Vietnam War. Early in the morning on Memorial Day in 1993, the first year of his presidency, Clinton visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A memorial service would be held a few hours later. Clinton searched the long marble wall inscribed with the names of some 60,000 servicemen killed or missing in the war. He finally found the name of his hometown friend and fell to his knees before the wall. He stroked the inscribed name, and, reportedly, made up his mind to do his best to look for missing soldiers.
¢ºYad Vashem in Jerusalem is Israel's official memorial to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Hebrew words mean "a memorial and a name." With a budget of tens of billions of won, Israel has produced a database of some 3.2 million victims based on a collection of their names, photos and personal materials. The catacomb-shaped children's memorial hall reverberates with recorded voices calling the names of 1.5 million victims one by one.
¢ºThe Wall of Names was dedicated in Paris in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The large stone edifice bears the names of 76,000 Jews who were hauled from France to Nazi death camps. Many countries around the world still keep records of and remember the names of their heroes and victims. They are remembered as individuals with names, rather than buried as an anonymous mass.
¢ºThere is a ritual called "kobok" in the traditional Korean funeral service. Just after the deceased breathes his last, mourners call out his name three times so that his departing spirit may come back. If the call does not bring the deceased back to life, only then is he officially determined dead. "O, the name that has been scattered!/ O, the name that has vanished in air!/ O, the name that has not answered my call!/ O, the name that I will surely die while calling out!" So begins the poem "Chohon (Calling Back the Spirit)" by Kim So-wol, vividly describing the performance of the kobok ritual.
¢ºAn event will be held in front of the White House in Washington from Sept. 1 to call out the names of some 83,000 South Korean civilians abducted to North Korea during the Korean War. Members of the Citizen's Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees and a Japanese organization named Rescuing Abductees Center for Hope will call out every single name of the abductees, whose fate is unknown, for four days. We have forgotten them, but their names will be called out in a foreign country across the Pacific after some 50 years. I feel heavy-hearted, reminded of the maxim, "Neglecting the past is neglecting the future."
The column was contributed by Chosun Ilbo in-house columnist Kang In-sun.
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