War trauma is not cured by time / The war in Ukraine

My parents suffered through the war, unable to evacuate, moving back and forth across the eastern front throughout the Korean War. My mother endured a massacre, but my father suffered trauma from having been nearly killed as a soldier (and thus survived) or having personally experienced killing the enemy. Once, while my father was driving a truck loaded with bodies during his time as a non-commissioned officer in the South Korean army, a North Korean soldier jumped into the driver's seat and attacked him with a broadsword. Without even having time to grab the rifle he had set aside, the People's Army fell out of the vehicle in the ensuing struggle, suffering a crushing head on a wheel. At the time, my father was at war, and if it had been peacetime, it would have been a case of self-defense, but after overcoming the attack through physical contact, he often told me about it when he was drunk. He said that it was not my father who killed the North Korean soldiers, but the soldiers themselves who died. My father, who had a very moderate personality, was tormented by that scene until the very end.

 

I think the war in Ukraine, which has dragged on for four and a half years, has deepened the war trauma among the Ukrainian people and young Russians. Russia must hold end-of-war talks quickly, taking the harm to its own people into account. Although Ukraine and Russia have conflicting attitudes toward South Korea, South Korea should consider carefully Ukraine's desperate situation for overcoming its difficulties and Russia's friendly stance toward Korea from a postwar economic and strategic perspective.

The Country Where Time Cannot Heal

Ukraine's War Trauma and the Lesson Korea Must Remember

Lee Hyeong-chun · Independent Columnist · October 2026

Introduction

Four years and eight months have passed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Washington is trying to revive trilateral talks this October, yet Moscow still demands eastern territory its army has not even captured. International forecasters put the odds of a ceasefire before the end of this year at around 15 percent. The war has not ended, and in the meantime deep wounds have already been carved into the minds of Ukrainians.

A nationally representative survey released in September found that 31.2 percent of Ukrainian respondents met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex PTSD. A smaller study found probable PTSD at 31 percent, yet only 15 percent of participants had sought psychological help. One in three carries the wound; most carry it alone.

This column asks where that wound came from, why it will not heal easily, and what Korea must remember as it watches.

1. "An Avoidable War": Blaming the Victim Twice

It is often said that Ukraine fought a war it could have avoided: had it not insisted on NATO, had it respected Russia's security concerns, the tragedy would never have happened. I reject this argument without reservation. Telling a victim of violence "you brought this on yourself" is what trauma researchers call secondary victimization, and it makes recovery harder than the original injury. Placing a heavier burden on the weak is, in my view, one of humanity's oldest diseases.

The argument also fails on the facts. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in return for assurances of its territorial integrity. In 2010 it adopted "non-bloc" status by law. It was precisely while Ukraine was legally non-aligned, in 2014, that Crimea was annexed. Neutrality did not protect it.

Some argue that Russia, lacking natural geographic fortifications, panicked at NATO's eastward expansion. Yet when Finland joined NATO in 2023 and greatly lengthened the alliance's border with Russia, Moscow's reaction was comparatively muted. Defensive fear alone cannot explain Russia's fixation on Ukraine. Russia is not a country that goes to war for such passive reasons.

2. Two Wounds Split from the Holodomor

Deep in Ukrainian memory lies the Holodomor, the famine of 1932-33. Under Stalin's forced collectivization and grain requisitions, an estimated 3.5 to 5 million people starved to death, and the entire countryside was crushed by hunger. In Soviet times this memory could not be spoken aloud; only after independence in 1991 was it restored to public remembrance. When Russia blockades grain exports and strikes Ukraine's farmland and ports, and Ukrainians speak of "a new Holodomor," I read it as an inherited, intergenerational wound being torn open again.

And what of the Russians? Where does the numbness of a society that barely flinches as its own soldiers are expended en masse and neighboring cities are turned to rubble come from? I see it not as an ethnic nature but as the product of accumulated state violence: serfdom until 1861, conscription that consumed people as raw material, Stalin's purges and the Gulag, and some 27 million Soviet dead in the Second World War. Centuries of a state treating human beings as expendable have anesthetized an entire society.

The Ukrainian memory of the Holodomor and Russian numbness are, in the end, two wounds that split from the same state violence. One became memory and resistance; the other, paralysis and compliance. Now the paralysis of one deepens the wound of the other. The accounts, from the war's early days, of Ukrainian children calling their parents in Russia from bomb shelters only to be told "that isn't happening" show this structure at its most painful.

3. Time Does Not Heal on Its Own

We like to say that time heals all wounds. Trauma research says otherwise. The psychiatrist Judith Herman identified the stages of recovery as, first, safety; second, remembrance and mourning; and finally, reconnection. As long as the threat continues, time does not close the wound. It hardens it.

Russia's invasion has fatally robbed Ukrainians of time as a remedy. It reopened the healing scar of the Holodomor, and it has permanently refused to acknowledge itself as the perpetrator. Russia does not recognize the Holodomor as genocide, and in his 2021 essay Vladimir Putin claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people," denying Ukrainian nationhood itself.

In the history of reconciliation, what proved decisive was not time but the perpetrator's acknowledgment. Only after West German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial in 1970 did German-Polish reconciliation begin to move in earnest. Time becomes medicine only after acknowledgment. This war has destroyed Ukrainians' trust in Russia entirely, and that wound will last a very long time.

4. Recovery Without Acknowledgment: The West Must Embrace Ukraine

If acknowledgment from the perpetrator cannot be expected, what can Ukrainians recover through? I believe the condition is a firm embrace by the West. Ukraine fought on in the belief that it was not alone. The West therefore has a responsibility to answer that belief and to commit itself actively to Ukraine's postwar reconstruction.

Psychology has a concept called betrayal trauma: being abandoned by those one trusted and depended on wounds more deeply and for longer than harm done by an enemy. Ukraine has already watched the security assurances of the Budapest Memorandum come to nothing once. If, after a ceasefire, the West retreats citing "support fatigue," a wound of betrayal will be laid on top of the wound Russia left.

5. The Mirror Korea Holds Up

Korea is a country that can understand this wound better than most. But it must choose its comparisons carefully. Likening Russia and Ukraine to North and South Korea and speaking of "reunification" is dangerous, because it unwittingly adopts the Kremlin's frame that the two are one people. Ukraine is a distinct nation that won independence from an imperial center.

The Russia-Ukraine relationship more closely resembles that between Korea and Japan: a former ruler and the formerly ruled, where the wound keeps reopening even after eighty years so long as the victim feels the perpetrator has not sufficiently acknowledged it. Where Korea's experience of division fits precisely is inside Ukraine. The suspicion and resentment between those who survived occupation and those who did not, between those who left and those who stayed, between those who fought and those who did not, recall the reprisals and stigma that tore through Korean villages after the Korean War. And if this war halts as an armistice without resolving the territorial question, the tension of an "unfinished war" that the Korean peninsula has lived with for more than seventy years since 1953 will be reproduced in Ukraine.

6. The POW Dispute and Korea's Proper Stance

Seoul and Kyiv have recently fallen into a diplomatic dispute over North Korean prisoners of war. When President Zelensky disclosed at the UN General Assembly on September 23 that two captured North Korean soldiers had been transferred to South Korea, Seoul accused Kyiv of breaching a nondisclosure agreement and demanded an apology; Kyiv replied that no such agreement existed. Seoul announced the recall of its ambassador on October 8 and decided on October 20 to withdraw additional embassy staff.

Seoul's concern is not trivial. The safety of the prisoners' families still in North Korea is a matter of human life, not diplomatic face. Even so, I am concerned about a continued hard line. With Russia bound to North Korea by a mutual military assistance treaty, the sight of Seoul cornering Kyiv risks making Korea appear to stand on the side of the Russia-North Korea camp.

What Korea needs is neither cold detachment nor condescending pity, but a language of persuasion between equals: "We fully understand your situation; we ask you to understand ours, namely the safety of families left behind in the North." Ukraine is a suffering victim and, at the same time, a sovereign state making strategic judgments in its own interest. Treating it as an adult is the truest form of respect. Rather than clinging to a demand for an apology, shifting the agenda toward a joint framework for handling any future North Korean prisoners would let both countries save face.

Two levels must be kept distinct here. In moral judgment, the aggressor and the victim are clearly not the same. If Korea keeps a careful diplomatic distance and avoids becoming overly entangled with either side, it does so because of the peninsula's particular circumstances, not because both sides are equally right or equally wrong.

7. The Most Important Lesson: Weak Nations Become Prey

Russia designated South Korea an "unfriendly country" in 2022, yet it has never fully closed the door. That is calculation, not goodwill. Russia will need Korean capital and technology to rebuild its economy after the war, and so it carefully manages the Korea card, never letting the tension slacken. Korea must not mistake that calculated smile for friendship.

History bears witness. When Korea was weak at the end of the Joseon dynasty, Russia sought to treat the peninsula as its sphere of influence. After King Gojong took refuge in the Russian legation in 1896, Russia intervened deeply in the Joseon court, and its 1903 attempt to lease Yongampo became one of the sparks of the Russo-Japanese War.

But honesty requires saying more. Russia was not the only power that coveted the peninsula then. Qing China did too, as did Japan, and it was Japan that ultimately made Korea a colony. The lesson of Ukraine's tragedy for Korea is not that Russia is uniquely evil. It is that a weak nation can become the prey of great powers at any time, and that Russia is the country now carrying out that logic most blatantly.

The wounds Ukrainians must bear in the years ahead will be deep and long. What Korea should hold as it watches is not mere sympathy, but the memory that we ourselves once stood in that place, and the resolve never to stand there again.

References

Al Jazeera. (2026, October 8). South Korea to recall Ukraine envoy in diplomatic row over POWs.

Al Jazeera. (2026, October 20). South Korea to pull more embassy staff from Ukraine after POW row.

Applebaum, A. (2017). Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. New York: Doubleday.

Bednářová, A., Kalymon, Y., Mikula, P., Hlaváčová, N., Obsuth, I., & Jarčušková, D. (2026). Mental health, coping strategies, and help-seeking behaviour during the ongoing war in Ukraine: A cross-sectional study. International Journal of Public Health, 71. https://doi.org/10.3389/ijph.2026.1610017

Dailian. (2026, October). After recalling its ambassador, Seoul withdraws embassy staff: What is the exit strategy for pressure on Ukraine? [in Korean].

Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Herald Economy. (2026, October). Ukraine's disclosure of North Korean POW transfer undermines Seoul's North Korea and Russia strategy: CSIS seminar [in Korean].

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books.

Kulyk et al. (2026). Prevalence of exposure to lifetime and war-related traumas, PTSD and complex PTSD in a sample from the Ukrainian general population. European Journal of Psychotraumatology. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2026.2697563

Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [Budapest Memorandum]. (1994, December 5).

Putin, V. (2021, July 12). On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Kremlin.

38 North. (2026, October). What Seoul and Kyiv should learn from the North Korean POW dispute.

UkraNews. (2026). Not this year: International analysts assess chances of ending war in Ukraine [citing Metaculus forecasts].

University of Manchester. (2026, September 29). Nearly one in three Ukrainian civilians has PTSD or CPTSD.

YTN. (2026, September 24). Two North Korean POWs transferred to South Korea [in Korean].

전쟁트라우마는 시간이 약이 아니다 / 우크라이나 전쟁

나의 부모는 한국전쟁기간 내내 피난을 못가고 동부전선을 오르내리면서 전쟁에 시달렸다. 모친은 학살극을 겪었지만 부친은 군인으로써 살해당하고 살해하는 일을 손수 겪은 트라우마가 있었다. 한 번은 부친의 국군 하사관 시절, 시신이 가득 실린 트럭을 운전하고 있는데 인민군이 운전석에 뛰어 올라와 부친을 대검으로 공격하는 일을 겪었다. 옆에 세워놓은 소총을 들 여유도 없이 격투 끝에 인민군은 차에서 떨어져 머리 부분이 바퀴에 깔리는 참극을 겪었다. 그때는 전시 중었고 평시였으면 정당방위 상황이기도 했지만 신체적인 접촉 끝에 공격을 극복한 부친은 술에 취하면 자주 그때 이야기를 했다. 부친이 죽인 것이 아니라 자신이 스스로 죽은 것이라고 했다. 성격이 매우 온건했던 부친은 그 장면 때문에 끝까지 괴로워했다.

 

우크라이나 전쟁이 4년 반을 끌며 우크라이나 국민들과 러시아의 젊은이들의 전쟁 트라우마가 깊을 것이라는 생각을 한다. 러시아는 자국민들의 피해까지 고려해서 빨리 종전협상을 해야 한다. 우크라이나와 러시아의 한국에 대한 태도는 엇갈리는 면이 있지만 나쁜 상황을 극복하기 위해 다급해진 우크라이나와 전후 경제 전략적인 관점으로 한국을 대하는 러시아의 친한성향은 한국이 냉정하게 고려해봐야 한다.    

시간이 약이 되지 못하는 나라

우크라이나의 전쟁 트라우마와 한국이 기억해야 할 교훈

이형춘 · 독립 칼럼니스트 · 2026년 10월

들어가며

러시아의 전면 침공 이후 4년 8개월이 지났다. 미국의 중재로 10월 3자 협상이 다시 준비되고 있지만, 러시아는 아직 점령하지도 못한 동부 영토까지 내놓으라는 요구를 거두지 않고 있다. 국제 예측가들은 올해 안 휴전 가능성을 15% 안팎으로 본다. 전쟁은 끝나지 않았고, 그 사이 우크라이나 사람들의 마음에는 이미 깊은 상처가 새겨졌다.

지난 9월 발표된 전국 대표 표본 조사에 따르면 우크라이나 응답자의 31.2%가 외상후스트레스장애(PTSD) 또는 복합 PTSD의 기준을 충족했다. 표본은 작지만 또 다른 연구에서는 PTSD 추정 비율이 31%였는데, 심리적 도움을 구한 사람은 15%에 그쳤다. 셋 중 한 명이 상처를 안고 있으나 대부분은 홀로 견디고 있다는 뜻이다.

이 글은 그 상처가 어디서 왔고, 왜 쉽게 아물지 않을 것이며, 한국은 그 앞에서 무엇을 기억해야 하는지를 묻는다.

1. "피할 수 있었던 전쟁"이라는 2차 가해

항간에는 우크라이나가 피할 수 있는 전쟁을 했다는 말이 돈다. NATO 가입을 고집하지 않았다면, 러시아의 안보 우려를 존중했다면 이 비극은 없었으리라는 것이다. 필자는 이 주장에 단호히 반대한다. 폭력을 당한 사람에게 "네가 자초했다"고 말하는 것을 트라우마 연구에서는 '2차 피해'라 부른다. 그 말은 원래의 상처보다 회복을 더 어렵게 만든다. 약자에게 더 큰 짐을 지우는 것, 필자는 이것을 인류의 오래된 질환이라고 본다.

이 주장은 사실관계로도 버티지 못한다. 우크라이나는 1994년 부다페스트 각서로 소련이 남긴 핵무기를 포기하고 영토 보전을 약속받았다. 2010년에는 법으로 '비동맹 지위'를 채택했다. 그런데 바로 그 비동맹 상태에서 2014년 크림반도가 병합되었다. 중립은 우크라이나를 지켜주지 못했다.

러시아가 지형적 요새를 갖추지 못해 NATO의 동진을 두려워했다는 설명도 있다. 그러나 2023년 핀란드가 NATO에 가입해 러시아와 NATO의 국경선이 크게 늘어났을 때 러시아의 반응은 상대적으로 조용했다. 방어적 두려움만으로는 우크라이나에 대한 러시아의 집착을 설명할 수 없다. 러시아는 그렇게 소극적인 이유로 전쟁을 하는 나라가 아니다.

2. 홀로도모르에서 갈라진 두 개의 상처

우크라이나인의 기억 깊은 곳에는 1932~33년의 대기근, 홀로도모르가 있다. 스탈린 체제의 강제 집단화와 곡물 징발 속에서 350만~500만 명으로 추산되는 사람들이 굶어 죽었고, 농촌 사회 전체가 굶주림에 짓눌렸다. 소련 시절 이 기억은 입 밖에 낼 수 없었고, 1991년 독립 이후에야 공적인 기억으로 복원되었다. 러시아가 곡물 수출을 봉쇄하고 농업 기반을 타격할 때 우크라이나인들이 "새로운 홀로도모르"를 떠올리는 것은, 세대를 건너 전해진 상처가 다시 열리는 현상이라고 필자는 본다.

그렇다면 러시아인들은 어떤가. 자국 병사들이 대규모로 소모되고 이웃 나라의 도시가 폐허가 되어도 크게 흔들리지 않는 러시아 사회의 둔감함은 어디서 왔는가. 필자는 그것을 민족의 본성이 아니라 축적된 국가 폭력의 결과로 본다. 1861년까지 이어진 농노제, 사람을 자원처럼 소모해 온 징병 제도, 스탈린의 숙청과 굴라그, 그리고 2차대전에서 2,700만 명에 이른 소련의 희생. 수백 년 동안 국가가 인간을 소모품으로 다뤄 온 역사가 사회 전체를 마비시킨 것이다.

결국 우크라이나인의 홀로도모르 기억과 러시아인의 무감각은 같은 국가 폭력에서 갈라져 나온 두 개의 상처다. 한쪽은 기억과 저항으로, 다른 한쪽은 마비와 순응으로 나타났을 뿐이다. 그리고 지금 한쪽의 마비가 다른 쪽의 상처를 더 깊게 만들고 있다. 개전 초기 폭격을 피하던 우크라이나의 자녀가 러시아에 사는 부모에게 전화했다가 "그런 일은 없다"는 대답을 들었다는 사례들은 그 구조를 가장 아프게 보여준다.

3. 시간은 홀로 치유하지 못한다

우리는 흔히 시간이 약이라고 말한다. 그러나 트라우마 연구는 시간이 홀로 치유하지 못한다고 말한다. 정신의학자 주디스 허먼은 회복의 첫 단계로 '안전'을, 다음으로 '기억과 애도'를, 마지막으로 '관계의 재연결'을 꼽았다. 위협이 계속되는 한 시간은 상처를 아물게 하는 것이 아니라 굳게 만든다.

러시아의 침공은 우크라이나인에게서 시간이라는 약을 치명적으로 빼앗았다. 아물어가던 홀로도모르의 상처를 다시 열었고, 가해자로서의 인정을 영구히 거부했다. 러시아는 홀로도모르를 제노사이드로 인정하지 않으며, 푸틴은 2021년 논문에서 러시아인과 우크라이나인이 "하나의 민족"이라고 주장하며 우크라이나의 국가성 자체를 부정했다.

화해의 역사에서 시간보다 결정적이었던 것은 가해자의 인정이었다. 1970년 서독의 빌리 브란트 총리가 바르샤바 게토 봉기 기념비 앞에서 무릎을 꿇은 뒤에야 독일과 폴란드의 화해는 실질적으로 움직이기 시작했다. 시간은 인정 이후에야 약이 된다. 이번 전쟁으로 우크라이나인들은 러시아에 대한 신뢰를 완전히 잃었고, 그 상처는 아주 오래갈 것이다.

4. 인정 없는 회복의 조건: 서방의 포용

가해자의 인정을 기대할 수 없다면, 우크라이나인들은 무엇으로 회복할 수 있는가. 필자는 서방이 우크라이나를 확실하게 끌어안는 것이 그 조건이라고 본다. 우크라이나는 "우리는 혼자가 아니다"라는 믿음으로 항전했다. 그렇다면 서방은 그 믿음에 응답할 책임이 있으며, 전후 복구를 적극적으로 도와야 한다.

심리학에는 '배신 트라우마'라는 개념이 있다. 믿고 의지했던 대상에게 버림받을 때의 상처는 적에게 당한 상처보다 깊고 오래간다는 것이다. 우크라이나는 이미 한 번 부다페스트 각서의 안전보장이 무력화되는 경험을 했다. 휴전 이후 서방이 '지원 피로'를 이유로 물러선다면, 러시아가 남긴 상처 위에 배신의 상처가 하나 더 얹힐 것이다.

5. 한국이 비춰보는 거울

한국은 이 상처를 누구보다 깊이 이해할 수 있는 나라다. 다만 비교의 대상을 정확히 골라야 한다. 러시아와 우크라이나를 남북한에 빗대어 '통일'을 말하는 것은 위험하다. 그것은 두 나라가 하나의 민족이라는 크렘린의 프레임을 무심코 받아들이는 일이다. 우크라이나는 제국의 중심에서 독립한 별개의 민족이다.

우크라이나와 러시아의 관계는 오히려 한일관계에 가깝다. 과거의 지배국과 피지배국, 그리고 가해자의 인정이 충분하지 않다고 피해자가 느끼는 한 80년이 지나도 상처가 계속 덧나는 구조다. 반면 남북 분단의 경험이 정확히 들어맞는 곳은 우크라이나 내부다. 점령지에서 살아남은 사람과 그렇지 않은 사람, 떠난 사람과 남은 사람, 싸운 사람과 싸우지 않은 사람 사이의 의심과 반목은 한국전쟁 이후 한 마을 안에서 벌어진 보복과 낙인의 역사를 떠올리게 한다. 그리고 이 전쟁이 영토 문제를 해결하지 못한 채 정전 형태로 멈춘다면, 1953년 이후 한반도가 70년 넘게 겪어 온 '끝나지 않은 전쟁'의 긴장이 우크라이나에서 그대로 재현될 것이다.

6. 포로 사건과 한국의 태도

최근 한국과 우크라이나 사이에는 북한군 포로 문제로 외교적 갈등이 벌어졌다. 9월 23일 젤렌스키 대통령이 유엔총회 연설에서 북한군 포로 2명의 한국 송환 사실을 공개하자, 한국 정부는 비공개 합의 위반이라며 사과를 요구했고 우크라이나는 그런 합의가 없었다고 맞섰다. 한국은 10월 8일 주우크라이나 대사 소환을 발표했고, 20일에는 공관원 추가 철수를 결정했다.

한국 정부의 우려는 가볍지 않다. 북한에 남은 포로 가족의 안전은 외교적 체면이 아니라 사람의 생명 문제다. 그러나 필자는 강경 대응이 이어지는 것을 우려한다. 북한과 상호 군사지원 조약을 맺은 러시아 앞에서, 한국이 우크라이나를 몰아세우는 모습은 자칫 한국이 북러 진영 쪽에 선 것처럼 비칠 수 있다.

한국에 필요한 것은 냉정한 단절도, 동정 섞인 시혜도 아니다. "우리는 당신들의 처지를 충분히 이해한다. 그러니 당신들도 북한에 남은 가족들의 안전이라는 우리의 처지를 이해해 달라"는 대등한 설득의 언어다. 우크라이나는 고통받는 피해자이면서 동시에 자기 이익을 위해 전략적 판단을 내리는 주권국이다. 그들을 어른으로 대하는 것이 진정한 존중이다. 사과 요구에만 매달리기보다, 앞으로 생길 수 있는 북한군 포로 처리를 위한 공동 원칙을 함께 만드는 쪽으로 의제를 옮기는 것이 두 나라 모두의 체면을 지키는 길이다.

여기서 두 층위를 분명히 구분해야 한다. 도덕적 판단에서 침략자와 피해자는 분명히 다르다. 한국이 어느 한쪽에 지나치게 몰입하지 않고 외교적으로 신중하게 거리를 조절하는 것은 한반도의 특수한 사정 때문이지, 양쪽이 똑같이 옳거나 그르기 때문이 아니다.

7. 가장 중요한 교훈: 약한 나라는 먹잇감이 된다

러시아는 2022년 한국을 비우호국으로 지정하면서도 한국에 대한 문을 완전히 닫지는 않았다. 그것은 호의가 아니라 계산이다. 전쟁이 끝난 뒤 자국 경제를 일으켜 세우는 데 한국의 자본과 기술이 필요하기에, 한국이라는 카드를 관리하며 긴장을 늦추지 않고 있는 것이다. 그 계산된 미소를 한국은 착각해서는 안 된다.

역사가 이를 증언한다. 구한말 한국이 약했을 때 러시아는 한반도를 자국의 세력권으로 다루려 했다. 1896년 아관파천 이후 러시아는 조선 조정에 깊숙이 개입했고, 1903년 용암포 조차 시도는 러일전쟁의 도화선 가운데 하나가 되었다.

그러나 정직하게 말해야 한다. 그때 한반도를 노린 것은 러시아만이 아니었다. 청나라도, 일본도 그랬고, 끝내 한국을 식민지로 만든 것은 일본이었다. 우크라이나의 비극이 한국에 주는 교훈은 러시아가 특별히 악하다는 것이 아니다. 약한 나라는 언제든 강대국의 먹잇감이 된다는 것, 그리고 지금 그 논리를 가장 노골적으로 실행하고 있는 나라가 러시아라는 것이다.

우크라이나 국민들이 앞으로 겪어야 할 상처는 깊고 길 것이다. 그 상처를 지켜보는 한국이 품어야 할 것은 단순한 연민이 아니다. 우리 자신이 한때 그 자리에 있었다는 기억, 그리고 다시는 그 자리에 서지 않겠다는 각오다.

참고문헌

데일리안. (2026, 10월). 대사 소환 이어 공관원 철수까지…對우크라 압박 높인 정부, 출구전략은.

헤럴드경제. (2026, 10월). "우크라 北포로송환 공개, 韓 대북·대러 전략 훼손": 美 CSIS 세미나.

YTN. (2026, 9월 24일). 북한군 포로 2명 한국 송환…유용원 "3~4일 전 도착".

Al Jazeera. (2026, October 8). South Korea to recall Ukraine envoy in diplomatic row over POWs.

Al Jazeera. (2026, October 20). South Korea to pull more embassy staff from Ukraine after POW row.

Applebaum, A. (2017). Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. New York: Doubleday.

Bednářová, A., Kalymon, Y., Mikula, P., Hlaváčová, N., Obsuth, I., & Jarčušková, D. (2026). Mental health, coping strategies, and help-seeking behaviour during the ongoing war in Ukraine: A cross-sectional study. International Journal of Public Health, 71. https://doi.org/10.3389/ijph.2026.1610017

Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books.

Kulyk 외. (2026). Prevalence of exposure to lifetime and war-related traumas, PTSD and complex PTSD in a sample from the Ukrainian general population. European Journal of Psychotraumatology. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2026.2697563

Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [부다페스트 각서]. (1994, 12월 5일).

Putin, V. (2021, July 12). On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Kremlin.

UkraNews. (2026). Not this year: International analysts assess chances of ending war in Ukraine [Metaculus 예측 인용].

38 North. (2026, October). What Seoul and Kyiv should learn from the North Korean POW dispute.

University of Manchester. (2026, September 29). Nearly one in three Ukrainian civilians has PTSD or CPTSD.

Field jobs that are shunned in Korea

Recently, while on the verge of caregiving bankruptcy, I was looking for a suitable nursing home to care for my 90-year-old mother and ended up passing through the industrial complex where I had worked over 20 years ago. I felt a heavy sense of melancholy. While the reality of an aging population in Korea is bleak, the industrial complexes’ state of disrepair, even more severe than 20 years ago, made me reflect once again on the country’s future. Even so, with a per capita income of $40,000, the current national income was meaningless.

 

In my second year of college, I took a general elective course called [Problems of the Korean Economy] in the fourth year of the economics program, and I described Korea's future—where small and medium-sized enterprises are undervalued compared to Taiwan and Japan—in my answer sheet and received an A+. In fact, during my first-year Introduction to Economics class, a professor who was a PhD from the prestigious social science university of Freiburg in Germany once praised me for being an excellent responder. I was interested in economics because I had thought of the North Korean economy early on.Then, am I a leftist for talking about the neglect of Korean small and medium-sized enterprises? Am I right-wing for talking about marketizing North Korea? It will probably be an onion. I am the Union, not the Onion.

 

While teaching public administration and police studies at an academy, something suddenly came to mind: I studied for a one-year vocational school program, earned a few certifications, and joined the employment agency. After seeing the reality of Korean small and medium-sized enterprises, I wanted to establish a vocational school in Wonsan, North Korea, in the future. I’m still steadily learning programming languages like Python and C, but I think I’m a Korean by heart.

 

Today, the AI doesn't call me 'teacher' as usual, but "Hyungchun-nim." So I asked. "Do you think I look ridiculous just because I'm discussing a topic about small and medium-sized enterprises instead of the usual academic debates? And I confronted the AI, asking, "Do you find field workers funny too?" Because humans look down on field workers, AI looks down on them too. There will be a day when you will deeply regret it.

A Nation That Looks Down on

Its Workers

Before asking whether Korea needs growth or welfare, ask who does the work and who gets the respect

Lee Hyeong-chun · Independent Columnist

October 2026

1. The Wrong Question

Does Korea need growth more, or welfare? The question returns every budget season. I think the question itself is wrong. In Korea today, growth and welfare are not rivals. They are one body. And that body is standing on a single leg.

Start with the numbers. The National Assembly Budget Office expects 3.5% growth this year, carried by a semiconductor boom. On the strength of that tax revenue, the government has drawn up a 2027 budget of 820.9 trillion won, up 12.8%. Welfare spending rises 9.3% to 289 trillion won. On the surface, growth and welfare are expanding together.

Yet over the same period the OECD estimates Korea's potential growth rate at 1.71% this year and 1.57% next year. The Budget Office puts it at 2.2%. The institutions disagree on the figure, but they agree on the substance: the economy's underlying strength sits at around 2%. While chips lift the headline numbers, the body underneath is weakening.

Semiconductor taxes become the budget, and the budget becomes welfare. The day chips falter, welfare falters with them. Korea has put its eggs in one basket. Before asking growth or welfare, we must ask why Korean growth is trapped in a single basket at all.

2. Returning to the Industrial Park After Twenty Years

A few days ago I visited the industrial park where I worked some twenty years ago, a district once packed with small manufacturers. It had been declining for two decades. The prime contractor I worked for and the subcontractors we hired had both gone into decline. This I saw with my own eyes.

The statistics say the same. According to the Korea Productivity Center, labor productivity at large manufacturers rose 8.2% in 2024 to 460 million won per worker, while at small and medium-sized enterprises it fell 2.0% to 136 million won. The gap is the widest in a decade. In 18 of 32 national industrial complexes, utilization rates fell at firms with fewer than 50 employees, and small workshops in the foundational trades of metalworking, casting and surface treatment report labor shortages of 30 to 50%.

Twenty years ago I visited an electroplating shop to outsource work to it. The facilities were dismal, and the men who would handle our order greeted us with sleep-crusted eyes and no visible interest. I finally spoke up. There are so many factories around here, I said; there must be plenty of work. Renovate the building. Automate the dangerous processes with robots. Take out a government loan if you have to.

Looking back, the advice was right, but it must have sounded different to them. I was the one setting the price. If they borrowed to invest and raised productivity, the gains would leak upward at the next contract as a lower unit price, and if orders stopped, they would be left with only the debt. Under that structure, not investing is the rational choice. What I read as laziness may have been learned resignation.

But prime contractor and subcontractor were never each other's enemy. Both were small firms, and both went down together. The real asymmetry lay above them, in their relationship with a handful of conglomerates.

3. Not a Shortage of Workers, but a Misallocation

When I worked in that factory, I drew a great deal of resentment from older workers who had nowhere else to go. They said the stone that rolled in was pushing out the stones already set. In the same industrial park stood factories that could not run their lines for lack of hands, and people terrified of losing their jobs. Korea does not lack workers. It has placed them in the wrong places.

Where are the young? Last year the number of people in their twenties and thirties working at establishments with 300 or more employees reached about 1.58 million, the highest since records began. Young employment at small establishments fell to a record low. Meanwhile, 717,000 people in their twenties and thirties were classified as simply resting, also a record. Rather than work at a small firm, young people choose not to work at all.

They cannot be blamed. In 2024 the average monthly wage at small and medium-sized firms was 3.51 million won, half the 7.16 million won paid by large firms. Accumulated over a career, the gap exceeds one billion won in lifetime earnings. And once inside a small firm, it is hard to get out: even among workers in their twenties, the most mobile group, only 5 to 6% move from a small firm to a large one. Choosing a small firm as a first job is a lifelong gamble.

So the supply of people to the shop floor has been cut off. The failure to correct this is the greatest failure of Korean industrial policy.

4. The Roots of Contempt for Field Work

The wage gap is a symptom. Beneath it lies something deeper. Korean society looks down on work itself.

One year, when the Chuseok holiday fell late, I was driving a bus near the factory district where I used to work. Down streets where fallen leaves tumbled in the wind, the only vehicles moving were police cars, fire trucks and my bus. These are the people who hold society up on the days society rests. Police, firefighters and bus drivers are themselves part of the welfare system. Yet they receive little respect, because theirs is field work.

Where does this contempt come from? I see two traditions. One is the Confucian hierarchy of scholar, farmer, artisan and merchant. The other is a deep orientation toward power. In truth they are two faces of the same thing, because the scholar at the top of that hierarchy was not a maker of anything but a ruler of people. In modern Korea, the merchant has risen to the top as conglomerates and asset holders, but the artisan remains at the bottom. The order has shifted, but one principle has never changed: those who stand over people stand highest.

I learned this in my body.

A field worker has only machines beneath him. An office worker has field workers beneath him.

In Korea, status is measured not by what work you do but by whom you stand over. Every industrial society has some hierarchy of white collar over blue. What sets Korea apart is the intensity of that hierarchy, and the absence of any ladder once you have been placed at the bottom.

5. Contempt and Real Estate: Two Symptoms of One Root

I believe Korea's housing problem is bound up with this contempt for work. In a society that undervalues money earned by sweat, people seek wealth through assets instead of labor. Everyone leaves the regions and industrial parks where field jobs exist and crowds into Seoul. The result is the apartment.

The causation runs the other way too. A person can work thirty years and never afford a home, while an apartment owner earns hundreds of millions of won sitting still. In a society that watches this happen, labor naturally looks foolish. So the two are less cause and effect than a cycle that has fed itself. And since Japan, a country known for honoring craftsmanship, still suffered an enormous property bubble in the late 1980s, real estate clearly has independent causes as well: interest rates, taxation and the concentration of everything in the capital region.

I therefore see them as two symptoms of a single root: a society in which the value of labor income and asset income has been inverted, where money made by owning is respected more than money made by working. Contempt for field work is that inversion expressed in people. The housing problem is that inversion expressed in money. The credentialism that treats a diploma as an asset grows from the same root.

6. What Taiwan and Japan Tell Us

Before TSMC, Taiwan was an economy driven by small and medium-sized firms, without conglomerates. Today Taiwan is even more concentrated in semiconductors than Korea: chips account for 34.7% of its exports, against about 20% for Korea, and thanks to them its growth forecast for this year stands at 9.64%. Critics will say Taiwan put its eggs in one basket and succeeded.

But there is a difference. Taiwan holds high market shares across chip design, fabrication and back-end packaging, so the whole ecosystem moves, not TSMC alone. The industry is in one basket, but the firms are in many. The DNA of its small-business era survived inside the semiconductor ecosystem. In Korea, the industry is semiconductors and the firms are, in effect, two. Korea's risk is not semiconductors as such, but a structure in which growth stays locked inside a few conglomerates and never spreads to smaller firms.

Nor have Japan's large corporations been wiped out. Japanese listed companies are on course for a sixth straight year of record net profits. But when some of Japan's consumer-electronics giants collapsed, strong small and mid-sized firms in materials, components and equipment held up the industrial skeleton. That second layer is what Korea lacks.

7. Welfare as an Instrument of Growth

What, then, should be done? We should not be greedy at the start. I propose beginning with a few steps.

First, give welfare benefits to employees of small and medium-sized firms. Programs already exist: a savings scheme that builds 18 million won for young workers who stay three years at manufacturing or construction firms with fewer than 50 employees, and, from this year, a retention incentive of up to 7.2 million won over two years for young workers at small firms outside the capital region. These are far too small to close a billion-won lifetime gap, and workers may leave at maturity. That is acceptable. If young workers stay on the shop floor until maturity, that alone is a success. In the meantime, the factory accumulates skill and the young gain field experience. The next step can come next.

Second, tie housing support to tenure. Housing is the most basic form of welfare. If wages earned by work cannot buy a home, then we must make work itself lead to a home. Linking tenure in small manufacturing to housing support rebuilds the broken bridge between labor income and assets.

Third, create incentives for Korean workers to enter the shop floor rather than relying on foreign workers. This is not a call to exclude foreign workers; they are the most disrespected field workers in this country. The problem is a structure that leaned on cheap labor to postpone wage increases and automation. That structure kept field work tied to low wages, and low wages bred more contempt. To break the cycle, we must give Korean workers a reason to come in.

Fourth, change the working environment. Young people have already started coming into bus driving. As I see it, the reason is that electric buses have made the job cleaner. In a British survey, 78% of bus drivers preferred electric to diesel, a preference led mainly by new entrants to the trade. Factories should follow the same path: automate the dangerous and dirty processes and make Korean workers the managers of automated equipment. When forklifts replaced hand-carrying, porters became licensed operators.

Fifth, move retirees who are still able to work into small firms and manufacturing. Korea's elderly poverty rate is 39.7%, 2.7 times the OECD average of 14.8%. Welfare clearly works: public transfers bring elderly poverty down from 54.9% to 35.9%. But for those who can work, a job may be the better welfare. Those jobs, however, must be retrained supervisory positions, not work that wears the body down. Otherwise retirees will simply become another source of cheap substitute labor, replacing foreign workers in the same trap.

8. Conclusion

Growth or welfare is the wrong question. Welfare can be the means of broadening the base of growth, and only growth with a broad base can sustain welfare over time. What connects the two is the shop floor.

Technology alone will not be enough. The manager of an automated line is still a field worker with only machines beneath him. As long as Korean society respects the ability to command people more than the ability to handle machines and materials, the contempt will simply change form and continue. The final task, then, is not a policy. It is the way we ourselves look at work.

I am a born worker. I have seen this country from the factory floor, from the seat of a forklift, from behind the wheel of a bus. From those seats, Korea looked like a country that places those who work below and those who rule above. Until that order is reversed, neither growth nor welfare will last.

References

Accounts of the industrial-park visit, the electroplating shop, the resentment of older workers, the holiday bus route and the arrival of young drivers after electric buses are based on the author's direct experience and observation. References to Japan's late-1980s property bubble and the decline of Japanese consumer-electronics firms rest on generally known history and carry no separate citation. Sources marked (in Korean) are Korean-language publications; titles are translated.

1. The Value News. "National Assembly Budget Office forecasts 2.7% growth for Korea next year" (in Korean), 30 Sep 2026. https://www.thevaluenews.co.kr/news/201970

2. Dailian. "Potential growth rate falls below 2%, to 1.57% next year" (in Korean), 26 Apr 2026. https://www.dailian.co.kr/news/view/1637915

3. Kyungbuk Maeil. "2027 budget: 821 trillion won on the back of the chip boom" (in Korean), 1 Sep 2026. https://kbmaeil.com/article/20260901500511

4. HuffPost Korea. "821 trillion won budget tilted toward AI and chips" (in Korean), 2026. https://huffingtonpost.kr/article/260092

5. Dailian. "Chips thrive, but firm-size and regional gaps in manufacturing widest in a decade" (in Korean), 27 Jul 2026. https://www.dailian.co.kr/news/view/1671351/

6. News Tomato. "Small manufacturers in national industrial complexes face worsening conditions" (in Korean), 16 Sep 2026. https://newstomato.com/ReadNews.aspx?no=1313723

7. SBS Biz. "Why young people avoid small firms" (in Korean), 18 Jan 2026. https://biz.sbs.co.kr/amp/article/20000285616

8. Insight. "Large firms 7.16 million won vs. small firms 3.51 million won" (citing Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade) (in Korean), 28 Jun 2026. https://www.insight.co.kr/news/560480

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