Tuesday, April 26, 2011

LAT on South Korea's renewed annoyance at Japan

I've already covered it in this post, but John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times brings it to a larger audience than I can:
For two decades, the weekly protest has come as sure as the changing seasons: a handful of graying Korean women picketing Tokyo's embassy here, demanding an apology and compensation for being forced into sexual slavery during Japan's World War II-era occupation.

But soon after a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami last month killed more than 20,000 people and caused nuclear mayhem in Japan, something changed here. The so-called comfort women felt moved to hold another kind of rally: a vigil for Japanese victims.

"We hate the sin but not the people," said Lee Yong-su, 85. "We hope Japan will stand on its feet soon."

Suddenly, there was a sense that a bitter nationalistic rivalry might be replaced by something the Korean peninsula has rarely felt for its former conqueror: empathy.

South Korea was the first country to send a rescue team to the disaster area. The Korean Red Cross has raised $40 million, one of the largest nongovernment contributions to Japan after the quake. The newspaper Chosun Ilbo, which has often been critical of Japan and its policies, raised $10 million. Even the comfort women chipped in $15,000.

Many compared the moment to the brief window after the 9/11 attacks when many hoped that Democrats and Republicans might finally put aside their differences.

That, of course, didn't happen. And in the case of South Korea and Japan, the rapprochement also appears short-lived.

The two countries seem to have fallen back into old habits — like a couple in an abusive relationship where one has lorded over the other. They've gone to counseling, tried all the couples therapies. And just when one spouse is about to forgive the other, another unforgivable event comes to pass. Once again, signals are misread, and the relationship is back at a dysfunctional impasse.
I would emphasize that the South Korean view of Japan is highly dichotomized: among most SoKos, there is a mental separation between individual Japanese and the Japanese government itself. Despite Tokyo continuing to lay claim to territory they grabbed at the beginning of their brutal four-decade rule over Korea, there is still great sympathy and concern for the people of Japan who have been affected by the Tohoku earthquake, the ensuing tsunami, and the on-going nuclear crisis.

I just wish that both sides would stop doing things to poke the other in the eye, because with China rising and North Korea raving, we need to see more things like this.

8 comments:

  1. there are many Japanese movies that described comfort women just after ww2.
    there was not such comfort women's issue at that time
    so Japanese movie expressed them near truth..

    These movies draw them without a hesitation because there was no such problem of comfrot women at that time.
    And it was not necessary to change a fact in arbitrariness.
    These would be their general figures

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR23h-NdGIM&feature=player_embedded
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wvhrMLMQR4&feature=player_embedded

    1959 dokuritsu gurentai (DESPERATE OUTPOST)
    a Korean comfort woman is ...
    Dokuritsu-gurentai is a film directed by Kihachi Okamoto. In this film you can see several Japanese and Korean comfort women.

    Okamoto is also famous for his anti-war satire film The Human Bullet (Nikudan).

    a comfort woman was a girlfriend of the war correspondent.
    A confortwoman who said "I want to run the coffee shop in Tokyo after war" is a Korean.
    As for the Korean prostitute, all is money
    The misery that seems to have been forced is not drawn at all in this movie
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn9RFsO-FLc&feature=player_embedded

    ReplyDelete
  2. hoihoi, to be frank, I always find it difficult trying to figure out what exactly you mean.

    It looks like you're trying to say that the treatment they received wasn't so bad and that they were generally prostitutes.

    If that's the kind of thing you're getting at, I'd have to say that atrocity denial is one thing that makes Japan look very, very bad. Far worse than admitting wrongdoing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. >If that's the kind of thing you're getting at, I'd have to say that atrocity denial is one thing that makes Japan look very, very bad. Far worse than admitting wrongdoing

    I dont think so..
    there is no evidence at all. those prostitete chaged their mamory many times.
    http://www.exordio.com/1939-1945/codex/Documentos/report-49-USA-orig.html

    http://fujissss.exblog.jp/10697706/

    ReplyDelete
  4. http://www37.tok2.com/home/koreanworld/data/archives/korean10lies/woman.htm


    according to korean newspaper article
    Korea the Country of Liars..
    In every country there are crimes that uniquely reflect its society. National Intelligence Service director-designate Kim Seung-kyu, in a lecture he gave late in May when he was justice minister, said: "The three representative crimes of our country are perjury, libel and fraud." In simple comparison, not taking into account population ratio, South Korea saw 16 times as many perjury cases in 2003 than Japan, 39 times as many libel cases and 26 times as many instances of fraud. That is extraordinarily high given Japan's population is three times our own.
    The common denominator of the three crimes is lying; in short, we live in a country of liars. The prosecution devotes 70 percent of its work to handling the three crimes, the former justice minister said. And because suspects lie so much, the indictment rate in fraud cases is 19.5 percent, in perjury 29 percent and in libel 43.1 percent. "Internationally, too, there is a perception that South Korea's representative crime is fraud," Kim said, adding that recent major scandals show how rampant lying is in this country.

    The prosecution is not free from responsibility, since there is a sense in which its ingrained attitude in dealing with suspects for libel, fraud and perjury has contributed to making the crimes the scourge they have become.

    Lying is so common in our society because few recognize that it leads to crime. "What's wrong with telling a little lie?" they think. And here the big problem is that men of power, rather than ordinary citizens, indulge in lying on a massive scale, to the point where it is regarded as a necessary means of survival in some circles.

    A recent example that hurt us all is the lies of Kim Dae-yeop, finally punished by a court for fabricating a charge against the opposition presidential candidate in the 2002 elections. That lie determined the fate of a government. When the opposition party demanded an apology, he laughed in their face by sending apples -- phonetically, both apples and apology are “sagwa.”

    More staggering lies were told by the president's associates in the KORAIL “Oilgate” scandal. Deft alterations of wording by an influential lawmaker close to the chief executive and sudden failures of memory and brazen denials by others have all turned out to be false. Nonetheless, they managed to slip the clutches of the law, as if to show us that they can. We can well imagine why the ex-justice minister made his complaint.

    Such behavior generally has its roots in the arrogance and egotism of those who feel that what they do is always right and anything that gets in the way is wrong. It also springs from a perception that the best strategy is to reject anything that does not fit in with your beliefs -- for example by thinking that you don’t have to abide by laws you have decided are "evil".

    ReplyDelete
  5. hoihoi, you repeatedly use my forum (i.e., this blog) as your chance to spout out right-wing Japanese historical denial and obfuscation.

    Your posts are usually long, disjointed, often unintelligible, and frequently full of lies and disinformation.

    Using some lying political operative as a basis to call Comfort Women prostitutes, as you seem to be doing above, is just the latest.

    As much as I hate to do this with any commenter, I'm putting you on notice. I'm no longer going to tolerate the types of comments you've been making.

    Keep it short and clear and without the irrelevant smears, or it will be deleted. I am not required to provide a forum for right-wing Japanese imperial apologist smears.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Proud moment for Monster Island... :)

    You have attracted you first Right Wing Japanese troll!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sadly, Edward, not the first, not by a long shot.

    And that's not even counting [rhymes with cock-sadentalism].

    ReplyDelete
  8. Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant leak situation continues, a recruitment website in Korea recently published a job advertisement attracted the voice of all disputes, to stop the ads.The content of this ad is that recruiting district in Fukushima nuclear power plant personnel.

    A recruitment site in South Korea published a 22 night “activity room installer” job ads. Place of work in the Fukushima region, the monthly salary of 650 million won (about 39,000 yuan), no age, education and other restrictions, and has the work experience, limited to males, the number 100.

    Work content is secure areas in Fukushima erected temporary shelter to accommodate the affected people, the working period of four months from the beginning early next month. The job site also said: “to provide accommodation and round-trip airfare, all transportation of food from South Korea.”

    This ad is very sensitive to Internet users, they even said, “This is undoubtedly a modern version of forced labor.” Netizens from 24 day in some portal also launched to stop running these ads online signature drive. The situation is not unusual to see companies, after 24 this morning on the job advertisements park immediately.

    It is reported that companies publish the advertisement is from a Japanese construction companies contracted to earthquake victims in temporary settlements part of the project. Project Location The first nuclear power plant in Fukushima at a distance of 60 kilometers, the scale of 2 million units for the new activity room. In another development, the number of participants far more than 80

    http://gw.transn.com/en/archives/2883

    Is it the forced worker?
    they were as same as such level for korean

    ReplyDelete

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