The Nakajima Kikka, equipped with RATO rockets for lift-off. circa 1945
Posted on 05/18/2010 6:03:36 AM PDT by Willie Green
I was seated on a bench waiting for the subway train at Yangjae Station. Sitting next to me were two well-dressed men in their 40s. An electronic signboard kept showing '``Yangjae Station" in Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese one after the other.
One man mentioned, ``I think Chinese doesn't matter. But why Japanese?'' I felt hit hard by his myopic view of Japan. Of course, I understand why he asked so irritably.
As you well know, Korea was under Japanese colonization for 36 years, during which Japan's brutal imperialists committed atrocities against the Korean people. Since the end of World War Ⅱ Japan has never tried to compensate Korean victims at the government level and has claimed that the easternmost islets of Dokdo is under its jurisdiction.
In reality, encouraged by the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Japan deprived the Korean government of the right of diplomatic relations, seized Dokdo and incorporated it into a Japanese prefecture by issuing the Shimane Prefecture Public Notice No. 40.
To make the Korean people more enraged, Japan tries to indoctrinate its school children with its textbooks that describe Dokdo within its territorial waters. I was at a loss for words when on March 27 Minister Edano Yukio made the absurd remark, ``The Japanese invasion of the Korean Peninsula was historical necessity.'' Last year the Japanese government decided to give the wage of 99 yen (about 1,277 won or $1) to each of the seven Korean women who demanded compensation for their labor. These old ladies were mobilized in 1944 when they were young girls to work at a jet-fighter plant in Nagoya.
However, it is one thing to help Japanese tourists or businesspersons know where they are for their convenience in downtown Seoul, and completely another to harbor animosity toward the Japanese government's nonsensical claims to Korean territory and its lack of repentance on historical wrongdoing. The aforesaid Korean was refusing to differentiate these two facts.
Current international politics demands Korea, along with the U.S., keep a close relationship with Japan in terms of economy, security and diplomacy, as demonstrated by the sunken warship Cheonan in the West Sea and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to Beijing.
At the same time, we must make an all-out effort to straighten out the distorted history between Korea and Japan and to build up a more powerful military alliance. All this is possible if our economic basis is sound. As of the end of February when we were engrossed in the brilliant results by the Korean athletes in Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, the monthly bilateral trade balance was in favor of Japan by about $3 billion.
But it is quite hospitable to provide a variety of information for Japanese tourists and businesspeople as most other countries in the world do the same for Korean tourists and executives. Instead of making a childish response, we must be mature enough to judge which strategy is more beneficial to national interests and the welfare of the citizens.
To be honest, there are lots of good things that we need to learn from the Japanese people. As a Korean, I also feel some emotional distance from Japan as a country but I love the Japanese people at the same time. They are kind, polite, and honest and have good, orderly manners. They try to never inconvenience anyone. Compared to their behavior, it seems to me that the Korean people appear rather rough and rustic.
Being mired in a hostage mentality of a tragic history should not hinder our courage to face facts as they are. We must outgrow an immature way of thinking.
Anyone here read The Rape of Nanking?
Iris Chang’s book is gripping and worth the read. My dad’s cousin survived Nanking as a child but seldom talked about it. As a person of Chinese descent, I think the book overly generalizes Japanese culture vs. the Japanese military because there was a popular democratic movement within Japan during the 1920s.
All in all, though, the book was a good reminder of what happened during the Japanese occupation of China, which many conveniently forgot. My mom was fortunate to live in a part of Shanghai that was controlled by a Japanese officer who was educated in the West; it made all the difference in how her family and neighbors were treated. For the liberals who kneel at the altar of multiculturalism, that wartime experience of my mom’s is an important reminder of the importance of Western culture and why it should not be suppressed in the name of ‘multi-culti’.
It is time for Korea to put it behind them, not to forget it. The US made allies of Japan after WW2 and Korea should be able to do the same in the face of Chinese militarism.
Can’t we just get along? :)
Having said that, I'm still kind of surprised to see that this kind of "diplomatic tension" still exists. Didn't Japan and South Korea co-host the World Cup a few years back?
They were working on it, they just didn’t get’r’done before the war was over.
The Rape of Nanking is merely one chapter in that book.
The Nakajima Kikka, equipped with RATO rockets for lift-off. circa 1945
Oh crap. So all the raping and forcing women to be "comfort women" was incest!! Oh the humanity!!
...and the Israelis have had pretty good relationships with the Germans for quite a while now. If they could do that, anyone can get over...
Blessings on your family who survived the occupation.
Sometimes its good to be an island.
You would think!
Yeah but the Koreans also absolutely love Japanese Anime and they seem quite keen on pointing out that the Japanese royal family is vaguely related to Korean nobility.
But yeah calling them “dogs” irregardless of how they act isn’t terribly original.
Ranma 1/3... So what is the other third? An angel?
I love Korean flicks. I don't care if it's a romantic comedy or a serious drama-you just know someone is going to get a double kick to the chest.
Many Korean women were ‘drafted’ to work and it wasn’t in any kind of plant. They were sex slaves who were forced to service hundreds of men. If the women caught a disease or became pregnant they were killed.
Koreans still harbor ill will against the Japanese because the Japanese have never accepted responsibility and apologized for what happened.
I’ve personally spoken with old timers who lived through the occupation. It rivals anything that occurred at places like Bataan.
>Interesting read, but I’d bet against the guy on at least one trivia item; I doubt if Japan had any “jet fighter” plants in 1944.
I think I’d read somewhere that Germany had given them “jet fighter” plans and they were in the process of retrofitting when we dropped the bombs. Sorry, but it was a long time ago and I don’t have a source.
>>Ranma 1/3... So what is the other third? An angel?
Kimchi, actually...
Nope.
The germans knew they screwed up, and they apologized.
To my knowledge, Japan has not.
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