South Korean politics is one big row about history

Just as America has wrestled for years with whether to remove monuments to Confederate generals, so South Korea is gripped by a row about a bust. It concerns a statue of Hong Beom-do, a 20th-century Korean guerrilla leader, which stands on the grounds of the Korea Military Academy in Seoul. Those on the South Korean left consider Hong a nationalist hero; the right claims he fought against the ideals on which the Republic of Korea was founded and says the statue should be removed. On October 16th, after weeks of squabbling in parliament and newspapers, the military academy began to remove the bust as part of a sweeping renovation.