President Lee does something no Japanese prime minister will ever be able to do

President Lee Myungbak has done what no South Korean leader has and what no Japanese leader can: he has planted his feet on Tokto (Dokdo).

From AFP:

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak paid a surprise visit Friday to islands at the centre of a decades-long territorial dispute with Japan, which recalled its ambassador from Seoul in protest.

Lee was making the first-ever visit by a South Korean president to the rocky volcanic outcrops in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), roughly midway between South Korea and its former colonial ruler Japan.

Disregarding Tokyo's warnings that the visit would strain already prickly relations, Lee toured the main island and shook hands with coastguards as a South Korean flag fluttered in the breeze.

"Dokdo is indeed our territory and a place worth staking our lives to defend. Let's make sure to safeguard it with pride," pool reports quoted him as saying.

TV footage showed him posing for a photo in front of a rock painted with the slogan "ROK (South Korean) territory".

The South has stationed a small coastguard detachment since 1954 on the islands known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan.

The Tokto issue is one that, for a variety of reasons (including many not of South Korea's own making), will simply not go away until either Japan or South Korea (or North Korea) drops their claim or at least stops pushing it.

I am completely in support of the ROK claim to the Tokto Islets (known in Japan as Takeshima and sometimes internationally as Liancourt Rocks) ranging from the historical to the political to the practical*, but in 2005 I complained about the shrill response of Korean leaders to incidents in Japan that had been meant to provoke and should instead have been met with a low-key, ho-hum reply.

No finger-chopping, screaming, claiming Tsushima, etc., will do any good either for the collective Korean psyche or for Korea's position on the issue. In fact, it tends to erode the positive impression Korea™ has cultivated over the past few years.

ROK President Lee Myungbak visits the country of his birth. ROK President Lee Myungbak visits the Tokto Islets, rocky outcrops in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) firmly under South Korea's control since regaining them after liberation.

What works — and this is what I've been saying all along — is acting from a position of strength. Simply put, South Korea firmly has absolute control over the islands and the surrounding territorial waters and it should simply demonstrate that whenever Japan gets uppity with their anachronistic, ahistoric, and politically ill-advised claim.

I advised that South Korea should allow limited tours to the islets, and that's what happened. I have suggested (and it's under consideration) declaring all of Ullŭng-gun County (of which Tokto is a part and which includes all of Ullǔngdo Island) a national park.

And now President Lee Myungbak's visit to Tokto is another example of this. This is something that no Japanese prime minister can do, and it underscores the futility and pettiness of Tokyo's ongoing claim.

Good on you, Mr Lee. But be prepared for at least a little blowback: Tokyo has to do something to appease their political rightists and when they can't do anything in kind then they might be a little desperate.

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Truman's grandson visits Hiroshima

I missed the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima three days ago (today is the 67th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing), but this year's news surrounding the commemorations include a visit to the Peace Park by the grandson of Harry S Truman, the US president who authorized the unprecedented attacks on those two cities, a move credited with ending World War II in the Pacific.

From the Washington Post:

Truman’s grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel, and the grandson of a radar operator who was on both of the planes that dropped the atomic bombs, joined in the memorial. Ari Beser’s grandfather, Jacob Beser, was the only person who directly took part in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

In a news conference after the memorial, Daniel declined to comment on whether his grandfather’s decision was the right one.

“I’m two generations down the line. It’s now my responsibility to do all I can to make sure we never use nuclear weapons again,” he said, according to Japan’s Kyodo news service.

Daniel, 55, said earlier that he decided to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki because he needed to know the consequences of his grandfather’s decision as part of his own efforts to help achieve a nuclear-free world.

The U.S. government sent a representative — the American ambassador — to the annual commemoration for the first time two years ago. Ambassador John Roos attended the Hiroshima ceremony on Monday.

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said Japan must take a bolder role in leading global disarmament efforts and called on world leaders to come to his city to “contemplate peace.”

He also said the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant struck by a tsunami last year has shown the dangers of nuclear technology, even for peaceful purposes, and urged the government to create a mix of energy sources for Japan that is safe and secure.

While we're at it, I'll (re-)skewer the old chestnut that Koreans thought two atomic bombs were not enough. South Koreans are keenly aware that a large portion of those killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were Koreans working there (many of them forcibly so). You can read about one unlucky group here.

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Comfort Women statues and threats of terror

Back in Seoul after an unusually long hiatus, I was eager to visit a few places I'd been reading about in the news and blogs. Among them was the Comfort Women statue (or should I say, enforced sex slaves) located right across the street from the Japanese embassy.

So last week I headed there with my Nikon D60 and my iPhone 4. I walked purposefully down the street (I'd been to the embassy a few times, once to purchase a used right-hand drive Toyota Crown back in the 1990s, so I knew where it was). Down the street, I could see several policemen in the area, which is hardly surprising since they are tasked with protecting the various foreign missions, including the embassy of the former occupiers.

But as I approached the statue and stopped in order to position my Nikon, I was told by the senior police officer there, in Korean, that I could not take any pictures of the statue. Obviously I asked why that would be, and he told me there had been threats made to the statue.

Lest someone think that my rusty-from-Hawaii's-ocean-breeze Korean skills may have yielded a comprehension FAIL!, the polite-but-stern senior police officer (who looked to be in his late forties) mentioned the English word "terror" when he reiterated the reason.

I am usually not a confrontational person, though I can be when the situation warrants. This was not one of those times, and I thought that I would try charm and reason (I am very charming when I want to be). I told the guy I am from Seoul but lately I've been studying in Hawaii where I do a Korea news blog, and I'd been reading about this poignant statue — which I support — and I was keen to get a picture. I told them I'd read about the right-wing Japanese asshat (though I didn't say asshat) who had messed with the statue and I was sure was on their minds, but they said their threat was one from the future.

He asked me what my blog was and I used the ambient wifi to quickly type www.rjkoehler.com on my iPhone to show him Monster Island. Fortunately I had something a little less ridiculous than usual as the top post and he did that pensive ajŏshi sigh to show he was going to relent.

Just one picture, he said. That, too, he reiterated.

I quickly had to decide whether I should use the Nikon or the iPhone. The latter had the advantage of instantaneous editing and, with the ambient wifi (I really need to trademark that phrase), I could send it out right away (Blogger has a function where you can send posts via an email to a specially created Blogger address) so I went with that.

I asked the senior police officer and his young juniors if they'd like to be in the picture. They declined and parted like the Red Sea. I got my lonesome picture of the lonesome girl, with a banner to An Chunggŭn in the background.

Though they didn't ask, I showed them the picture and went on my way (I was late for a meeting at a 1970s-ish tabang with a friend who works with the mayor).

Before I blogged the little incident, though, I started to wonder if this was prudent. I emailed The Marmot, Zen Kimchi, and a couple others and asked if they knew anything about a no-photos regulation. They said they didn't, mentioned it's in a public area and there should be no reason it can't be photographed, and said I should go ahead and blog about it (if the cautious Marmot says go ahead, I figure there's nothing to worry about; I hope I don't end up in some Michael Breen-esque legal matter... I'm too pretty for prison).

So this was all on my mind when I read the news, a few days later, that someone Korean asshat decided, in protest of the Japanese right-wing asshat, to drive his truck into the Japanese embassy.

Could it be that the "terror" threat they were worried about was a domestic one? And did the police momentarily mistake me for an asshat?

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If we try real hard, then it neeeeeeeever happened.

It's ironic that this news would come on Memorial Day. And it's telling that it would come so soon after the news that Japanese officials were pushing a city in New Jersey to remove a monument to the hundreds of thousands of "Comfort Women" sex slaves (which I addressed here last week and The Marmot's Hole wrote a dedicated post on today).

안세홍_박대임-류산_흑백인화_127×200cm_2003 [source]

The news is that Nikon has decided to cancel an exhibition of the work of one Ahn Sehong, a photographer whose work includes some very touching photos of surviving* Comfort Women, including some Korean women left behind in China:

In the latest flare-up over Japan’s ongoing handling of Korean “comfort women” during World War II, Tokyo-based camera company Nikon Corp. has stirred controversy by cancelling a planned exhibit on the subject by a South Korean photographer.

The exhibit was to have been shown at the company’s Shinjuku salon from June 26 to July 9, and included photos of women who said they had been held as sexual slaves by the Japanese military in China in the 1930s and 1940s.

A spokeswoman for the photographer, Ahn Se-hong, said an official from Nikon called him last week and told him the exhibit would be cancelled, but did not give him any reason. The spokeswoman, Sadik Lee, told JRT that a Nikon official said they would like to meet Mr. Ahn in person to apologize, but he refused until he was given an explanation.

A Nikon spokesman, who declined to be named, confirmed the cancellation, and told JRT that “considering various circumstances in a comprehensive way, we have come to decide to cancel it. This is all we can say.”

The spokesman wouldn’t elaborate, but did confirm Japanese press reports of protests that Nikon received against the planned exhibit. The Asahi Shimbun reported that several complaints surfaced on the Internet, branding the exhibit a “betrayal” of Japan, and calling for protests of the exhibit.

The Wall Street Journal blog piece also ties this in with the Japanese diplomats' efforts to get the heavily kyopo (Korean American) community of Palisades Park** to remove the memorial. (Note, below, that the memorial does not mention Koreans once, even though Korean women made up the bulk of the women forced or duped into the Ianfu (Wianbu in Korean).

Though I think Japan and South Korea make far better friends than enemies, issues like this linger. But the critics of Korea (and the knee-jerk Japanophiles) who like to characterize this kind of issue as one where Korea likes feeling bad about this and constantly nitpicks at a generally contrite and (since World War II) well behaved Japan, utterly miss the point.

While they like to depict Japan as the one rational player here, this kind of action — going beyond deliberately downplaying unpleasant history and instead attempting to sanitize the historical record of some of the most egregious wrongdoing of Japan's imperial past — this concerted movement to instill collective amnesia at home and abroad goes beyond the pale.

Make not mistake: this is a pattern. We saw the same thing late last year after a simple but profound statue dedicated to the Comfort Women (pictured below) was erected across the street from the Japanese embassy to mark the 1000th weekly protest by surviving* Comfort Women at the same spot. That, too, brought official complaints from Japanese diplomats.

I shan't go any further into official Japan's shameless whitewashing of imperial Japan's shameful history. The reprehensibility of it all speaks for itself. Nikon, on the other hand, deserves to be called out for its cowardice in the face of such protests. I mean, if they thought Mr Ahn's work was worthy of an exhibit and they knew the contest of his photographs, how on Earth could they justify yanking his exhibition?

I'm truly torn. This is the kind of thing that can influence me to boycott certain products in protest. But I already have bought the Nikon D60. Back when I was undecided between the Nikon and its Canon equivalent, this would have easily sent me over to Canon (who, as far as I know, has not turned invertebrate in such a way, but who themselves may never have sought such a controversial exhibition at all).

I wish that there were some way that I and others in the anglophone K-blogopshere could individually or collectively exhibit Mr Ahn's work as a show of solidarity.

* I've started adding the word surviving to "Comfort Women" not just to reflect their advanced age but also because I've been reading lately how many women died during the actual war from disease, bombs, or bullets while "serving" in the Wianbu. It's much more than I'd realized. 

** At the risk of sounding glib in such a serious post, I find it amusing that so many Koreans have flocked to the New Jersey communities of Palisades Park and Fort Lee. But I'm easily amused.

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random mention of Korea in American entertainment media of the day

Not so much of a mention of Korea as an inclusion of Korean text. Hardly a rarity these days, but the thing is that the "monster" (that's what 괴물/koémul means) depicted in this Family Guy episode is supposed to be a Japanese competitive eating champion.

(The badge on his robe also says 꼬치/goch'i, the Korean word for shish kebab.)

Or am I missing some really subtle political statement about the lingering resentment (han, if you will) held by Koreans toward Japanese over numerous brutal transgressions in the first half of the twentieth century, personified by the presumably Korean woman, and then a Caucasian man, holding up signs declaring that the Japanese eating machine is indeed a monster?

Bravo, Family Guy. Bravo.

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In Korea, March 1 is Groundhog Day

As in the Bill Murray movie. Or so it would seem.

Every Independence Day (삼일절) in South Korea, the country and its political leaders look back on the colonial past with a sense of victory, owing to the nation's progress since liberation, along with a feeling of unresolved resentment and even bitterness (han, if you will) over the less than full-throated contrition by the brutal colonizing power itself (i.e., Japan).

You can go to Wikipedia and see a "list of Japanese war apology statementss," but that politically motivated entry doesn't include the, "but, but, but..." remarks that so often come with the actual apologies, or the statements of the right-wing parliamentarians falling over themselves to insist that PM Murayama's or PM Hosokawa's truly heartfelt and sincere apologies are just their own, or the later declarations by people in the ruling elite that the Comfort Women sex slaves were mostly prostitutes or that colonization was actually good for Korea. (The aforementioned list also lumps mealymouthed "statements of regret" in with actual apologies.)

No, from that self-serving litany, one wouldn't get the sense that any official Japanese apology, thus far, comes with an asterisk.

Anyway, on his last Independence Day as president of the Republic of Korea, Japan-born President Lee Myungbak decided to take on the issue. In a Marmot's Hole post well worth the read, President Lee is quoted as having said this:

For the two countries [Korea and Japan] to intimately cooperate as true companions, the true courage and wisdom not to avoid the historical truth is necessary above all. In particular, among many current issues, the Comfort Women issue is a humanitarian issue that needs to be concluded quickly. The grandmothers, who carried their pain in their hearts, are well past their late 80s. If they pass away without resolving the burden of their hearts while they were alive, it is not the case that all problems will disappear; rather, Japan will forever lose the opportunity to resolve this issue. This is why I urge the Japanese government to take a more active posture.

There is nothing I can find there with which I disagree. To many in the commentariat, however, their knee-jerk position is to do whatever is the antithesis of what most Koreans believe in, which prompted The Korean to write this:

The commentariat response on this issue, time and time again, never ceases to amaze me. It is as if they have no moral compass. This is one of the most heinous war crimes in World War II, and they think Korea is the bad guy.

Indeed, taking the Korean view and going the opposite way is, at best, an amoral compass. Sure, there are their oft-repeated justifications for taking the contrarian view — "They signed a treaty!", "Korea's post-war prosperity was built with Japanese money!", "This issue is nothing more than a cynical ploy to marshall support by corrupt politicians!", "South Koreans have sex slaves today!" — but the fact is that there are women living today who experienced the hell of brutal, unending, and often deadly sex slavery at the hands of the Japanese Imperial military and government.

I'm sure for those women and those close to them, it's a bit difficult to "get over it and move on." But thinking about this stuff in human terms is just so bothersome. Wouldn't it be easier if they just died and stopped protesting? Then we'd have the convenience of this truly being "all in the past," to which many have already relegated it because, essentially, the plaintiffs are Korean.

I'm not 100.0% in agreement with The Korean, though. As I've noted in past posts (like here and especially here), I do think the South Korean government owes money to those women as well, even if I don't think that lets Japan off the hook. In 1965, Tokyo was trying to do an end-run on its victims by working with a pro-Japan former officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, Park Chunghee, an iron-fisted ruler of South Korea who used the grants and loans (see, it wasn't all a gift, as some have made it out to be) and used them for regional and national development instead of compensation for Japan's direct victims.

The Korean describes Park Chunghee and the 1965 Basic Treaty thus:

You mean, the contract that flatly contravenes jus cogens, negotiated and entered into by an illegitimate dictator who was formerly an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, who did not even know the existence of the Comfort Women issue, without the consent of the people whose rights he signed away for less than a penny on a dollar?

The Korean, by the way, writes his own post on his own blog regarding the Comfort Women issue, also worth a read.

We'll have to see if President Lee gets anywhere with this. Expect it to be played out again in August, around Liberation Day.

In the meantime, another commenter, Yuna, pointed to what the Comfort Women survivors themselves are looking for, lest one think, as the nattering nabobs of uri nara naysaying say, that no apology will ever be good enough:

1. Acknowlege the war crime
2. Reveal the truth in its entirety about the crimes of military sexual slavery
3. Make an official apology
4. Make legal reparations
5. Punish those responsible for the war crime
6. Accuraely record the crime in history textbooks
7. Erect a memorial for the victims of the military sexual salvery and establish a historical museum

All told, doesn't sound terribly unreasonable (though guidance should be given for what constitutes an "official apology" and by whom under what authority). But if your counterpart's goal is to whitewash history and deal with a painful past by rationalizing it or just ignoring it, it might be a tall order. There are a lot of good people in Japan who recognize this as wrong (or would if they knew better about the issue), but there are those in power who are beholden to a sanitized view of the past where Japan was the victim of World War II, not the instigator.

Some day in the near future, it would be wonderful if we could stop replaying this issue as if March 1 really were Groundhog Day. That would take an effort on both sides, but the ball is clearly in Japan's (imperial) court.

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Korea and Japan as brothers?

Real life has been kicking my arse lately, so I haven't been able to keep up with things I enjoy, like blogging, moviegoing, or visits to the beach.

One movie I've been keen to see is My Way, by the same director who brought us Taegukki (aka Brotherhood). That film was about two brothers who end up drafted in the Korean War and sent to the front lines. It is a grueling account of how families were thrown into turmoil during that fratricidal conflict.


My Way, which takes place in World War II, is not about biological brothers, but instead focuses on two "countrymen," one from Japan and the other from Korea, then part of Imperial Japan. Like director Kang Jekyu, I feel Korea and Japan could be and should be closer allies than they are, but historic issues get in the way.

The kernel of the movie, which I am hoping to see when/if it makes its way to Honolulu (I missed it in California this past vacation), is the story of a few Korean soldiers in German uniform who were captured at Normandy. They'd been Japanese Imperial soldiers, captured by the Russians who forced them to fight, then captured by the Germans who did the same. Finally, they were captured by the Americans who didn't know what nationality they were (a long American tradition involving Koreans).

I'd first read about it here, when that site was linked to The Marmot's Hole in a post I cannot find (maybe this one?), and I remember thinking to myself, "Gee, they really ought to make a movie about this story."

Fastforward some three years later, and that's what we've got. But instead of making the Japanese into the villains, it seems Mr Kang has decided to take a different look at the war: From the Wall Street Journal:

It builds on the brotherhood theme that made his last movie, the 2004 epic on the Korean War called “Taegukgi,” one of the biggest hits in Korean cinema history. “Taegukgi” was about two brothers who fought on opposite sides of the Korean War. In “My Way,” the Korean soldier’s odyssey from Japan to the Soviet Union to Germany to France is matched by a Japanese man who was the Korean’s rival in long-distance running. Instead of blood ties, they are bound by shared experience and historic ties that loom larger for them the farther they get from home.

Mr Kang expands further on what he hopes to accomplish with the film, vis-à-vis Korea-Japan relations, at least at the social level:

I think Japan is the closest country to Korea. When the movie “Shiri” was released in Japan, it met with a favorable response from Japanese audiences, so I felt more familiar and close to Japan. But I feel sorry that Korea and Japan have a different perspective on some issues such as comfort women, Dokdo Island and the portrayal of Korea in Japanese textbooks. I thought if such situations keep going, the two countries will remain as far apart as ever. So I’ve wanted South Korea and Japan to have some opportunities to get closer and understand each other, and hoped to contribute it by making a movie. While my movies so far have talked about inter-Korean issues, I wanted to provide opportunities for Asian countries to understand each other more.

Hear! Hear! In a region of long memories and short tempers, it's hard to build bridges and start anew, but it's never going to happen if no one tries.

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Japanese Korea

This is from the ancient globe in the lobby of the local library.

Note that Seoul is the only place name not rendered in Nihon•go.

I think this pre-WWII globe is there for decorative and historical reasons and not because of massive budget shortfalls that prevent them from buying a new one.

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Insert joke about Mongolian navy here

There's a scene in one of the Planet of the Apes movies where the tough apes halt at the edge of the river as they pursue the humans because, well, they're afraid of water. I've always associated that scene with the Mongol invaders who took over nearly all of Korea — and most of Asia and a good chunk of Europe — on horseback but who stopped at the narrow sliver of water that separates Kanghwa-do Island from the Korean mainland, beyond which strait Korea's royal family was hiding in exile.

Yeah, the Mongols and water didn't mix so well. Yet there they were in 1274 and again in 1281, trying to cross the Korea and Tsushima Straits, in order to take over Japan. Their resounding defeat became a nation-defining moment for the Japanese, giving rise to the concept of kamikaze, gods of the wind, who supposedly came in and provided divine intervention that spared the archipelago from the horsemen of the steppe. (Some have suggested shoddy workmanship on the Korea-made boats — possibly deliberate — may have had as much to do with the Mongols' defeat.)

Anyway, it was a few days ago that the Japan Times had news that, amazingly, the largely intact wreckage of one of the Mongols' vessels was found a meter below the seabed off Nagasaki:

The wreck of a ship believed to have been part of the ill-fated attempts by Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China in the 13th century, to invade Japan has been found lying relatively intact under the seabed off Nagasaki Prefecture, a team of Japanese researchers said Monday.

It is the first wreck linked to the invasion attempts to have been discovered in Japan with much of the hull still intact, including a 12-meter section of the keel and rows of planks 10 cm thick and 15 to 25 cm wide attached to the keel, according to University of the Ryukyus professor Yoshifumi Ikeda and his team.

Discovered about 1 meter under the seabed in waters 20 to 25 meters deep off Takashima Island in Matsuura, Nagasaki, the wreck of the vessel, believed to have been over 20 meters long, is expected to provide archeologists with crucial information on the Mongol attacks in 1274 and 1281, which until now have been known mostly from documents and drawings.

"I believe we will be able to understand more about shipbuilding skills at the time as well as the actual situation of exchanges in East Asia," Ikeda told reporters in Nagasaki. He added that the wreck likely remained relatively well preserved because it was buried under the sand.

Both sides of the keel were painted whitish gray. The planking was held in place by nails. Bricks, ink stones and weaponry used by the Yuan Dynasty were found in the ship's bottom.

Now that's something I'd pay to see in a museum. Very cool. One wonders what else is sunk below the mud. Maybe off the coast of Yŏsu they can use the same technology to find a kobuksŏn, the so-called "Turtle Ship" that helped Admiral Yi Sunshin defeat the Japanese when they invaded Korea about three centuries later.  

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Guns, bullets, and canonization

Well, it looks like the Catholic Church in Korea is again trying to put nationalism ahead of church teachings — minor things like "Thou Shalt Not Kill" — by seeking the beatification and eventually canonization of uber-patriot Thomas An Chunggŭn (HT to occasional Marmot's Hole commenter Kuiwon, who has an interesting blog).

From the UCA News, Asia's most trusted independent Catholic news source:

Seoul archdiocese’s Preparatory Committee for Beatification and Canonization held a symposium yesterday at the Catholic Center to discuss the possibility of canonizing a “Catholic patriot,” Thomas An Jung-geun.

Thomas An assassinated Ito Hirobumi, Japan’s first prime minister and the first Japanese resident general of Korea, on October 26, 1909, in Harbin, northeastern China. He was later executed by the Japanese on March 26, 1910.

Koreans regard An’s killing of Ito as a symbol of Korea’s resistance against Japanese imperialism. Korea suffered greatly under Japanese colonial rule which ended in 1945.

For years the Catholic Church condemned the murder, but changed its position when the late Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan of Seoul officiated at a Mass for An in 1993, during which he said: “An acted in righteous defense of the nation. The Catholic Church does not regard killing committed to defend the nation from unjust aggression as a crime.”

The overwhelming view of the symposium yesterday was that An should eventually be canonized.

Readers of Monster Island may recall when this has come up in the past, like in March 2010, the anniversary of An's eventual execution for the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister and retired Governor-General of Korea, Itō Hirobumi, when Korea's cardinal made apparently "ambiguous" comments about Thomas An and his patriotism in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

And they would no doubt have seen some of my other posts on An, namely this one and this one from October 2009, which lay out my well reasoned views on An (and have resulted in some of the more contentious comments sections on this blog):

At the very least, I find it distasteful that someone like An Chunggŭn — whose importance goes little beyond having killed someone else — has become revered as a hero. Rest assured, however, many people born and raised in Korea also question this, particularly Catholics. I also find myself returning to the same conclusion that Korean kids are taught all about An and Itō because it was the highest level assassination by a Korean freedom fighter, and thus the importance and justness of the assassination is trumped up to make the act worthy of reverence.

As one can see, I certainly don't toe the party line on this our Thomas Templar and his Catholicism-divergent moral code. Historically, my view of An Chunggŭn (also spelled An Junggeun) is one of intense ambivalence, for while I admire anyone willing to die for a truly righteous struggle, I think he had the wrong target for revenge and his actions predictably led to an irrevocable drive by forces in Japan to push through the takeover of Korea.

But religiously and ethically, I'm far less ambivalent, for the Catholic Church is fairly clear on this kind of thing. Itō was an unarmed old man who had retired from politics, much like Jimmy Carter, and though he was representing Japan as an emissary, he did not seem to qualify as a valid military target in the struggle for Korea's freedom.

And while that view puts me in line with popular opinion about as much as my feelings about kimchi, I know that I'm not alone in that view in Korea. Sadly, though, people who feel as discomfited as I about the patriotic glorification and possible coronation of a man whose primary act was to kill an unarmed human being who was in no position to effect a change in Imperial Japan's ruthless aims in Korea in 1909, have generally felt that they need to keep their opinions to themselves, lest the Netizens try to ruin their day, or their livelihood.

UPDATE:
Writing in the Korea Times, Andrew Salmon takes a somewhat nuanced view of Itō. Perhaps the Times they are a changin'.

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Death, taxes, and forced sex with soldiers

Over at The Marmot's Hole there is an interesting discussion on Japan's culpability regarding the so-called Comfort Women sex slaves from World War II, in the wake of the Korean Constitutional Court saying that the South Korean government did wrong by the Comfort Women (and, by extension, others who were victims of Imperial Japan and did not receive compensation) by not divvying up the settlement money in 1965 and instead using it for economic development (it was the seed money for the Miracle on the Han). Although I don't think Tokyo doing an end run on paying compensation lets Japan off the hook ethically (or possibly even legally), I've long held that Seoul owes something to the Comfort Women and other forced laborers.

The conversation at TMH is interesting, with folks like Sonagi pulling up ads that are nearly completely in kanji/hantcha (Chinese characters) with hardly any Han•gŭl (Korean characters) at all. Others are talking about the nature and various forms some women were caught up in or duped into the Comfort Women positions back then.

And everybody's favorite Imperial Japan Apologist, Gerry Bevers, had this to say about various forms of slavery that may have been employed to obtain sex slaves on the Japanese front during World War II:

Bonded labor may be consided a form of slavery in many countries today, but in the 1940s it was obviously not considered such in Japan and Korea. You have to consider the times.

Today, some people may consider taxes a form of “bonded labor” because people are forced to pay them even without a signed contract. If you do not pay them, you can go to prison.

So, um, being forced to have sex with multiple soldiers every night for several years was merely a form of taxation in 1943? Okay, then.

Anyway, the order of the day was massacring civilians, torturing and killing people for experimental purposes, forced sexual servitude, and wholesale elimination of entire ethnic groups and other forms of genocide. So, going by Gerry's you-have-to-consider-the-times argument, all that's a-okay.

In response, Linkin' Lawyer Ben Wagner points out that Japan was a signatory on international agreements regarding what was euphemistically called "white slavery" back in those days, something to note when one "considers the times."

I'd also like to point out two things. First, like his arguments that Tokto (Takeshima) actually belongs to Japan, much of his case on Imperial Japan's near lack of culpability for anything bad that didn't really happen to Koreans (Japan's greatest ally!) rests on his speculation that such-and-such was what was really going on. In this case, he supposes (without evidence) that most of the Comfort Women were prostitutes and the true sex slaves were a very teensy-tiny percentage of the whole, if they exist at all.

The second thing is that using sex slavery in recent times — which has been a serious problem in South Korea — to suppose that "voluntary" prostitutes today means women were probably volunteering to be prostitutes back then, is quite disingenuous, and it gets bass-ackwards any cause and effect. What happened in the 1940s may have laid the groundwork for a whole new industry in Korea in the 1950s and beyond, but the existence of a systematic form of white slavery and prostitution in the late 20th and early 21st century had no effect on what happened in the 1940s.

...

Blatant apologism

If you've read my posts discussing the infamous Imperial Japanese apologist Gerry Bevers (here, here, and I guess here or even here), then you would know that I find comments like this from Mr Bevers so gallingly ignorant:

DLBarch wrote:

I could not agree more. One of the perplexing dynamics within the expat communities in Japan and Korea is that expats in Japan seem to overwhelmingly be card-carrying apologists for the country and members in good standing in the Chrysanthemum Club, while expats in Korea seem to be card-carrying members of the “I’m-white-and-privileged-but-still-manage-to-bitch-and-complaint-about-every-little-f*cking-thing club.

The irony, of course, is that Japan has SO MUCH MORE to answer for historically, and yet has all but gotten a free ride on its disgraceful historical legacy.

The ones who got off easy after World War II were the Koreans, who were allied with the Japanese. The US and her allies allowed Koreans to play the victim as much as they did because they wanted to break up the Japanese Empire. However, no matter how Koreans may try to spin it, they did support the Japanese war effort.

The Japanese did not get a free ride, Mr. Barch. Millions of Japanese soldiers were killed, along with hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.

The Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians, the Koreans, Australians, and Americans all committed war crimes, but it was only the Japanese and her allies who were convicted of them, and they were either executed or imprisoned. See HERE.

Japan lost all of its empire, and Japanese citizens in Korea and other places were forced to leave all of their proverty behind and return to Japan. On top of that, Japan paid a great deal in war reparations.

As for Korean comfort women, which we hear so much about, some may have been forced by Korean and Japanese pimps into the business, just as they are today, but most were probably just prostitutes looking to make an easy buck, just as they had done before and have done after.

I'm very busy this weekend, but when I have a chance, I'll write a response. Not from scratch mind you, but a collection of links, since this is old hash from Gerry that has been chased down by the antacid of truth and logic long ago.

I will acknowledge, though, that there were indeed Korean war criminals: they constituted some 1% of all the "Japanese" war criminals. There were also those who volunteered for military service, including Park Chunghee who later took over the country and was architect of its rise. But that does not negate that there were hundreds of thousands if not millions forced into hard labor, cruelty abounded, hundreds of thousands were killed at the hands of the Japanese or in Japanese military actions, hundreds of thousands of women were forced into sexual slavery, etc., etc.

And the idea that Korea — a country forcibly taken by Japan and then run with an iron fist by Japanese military leaders — could be described as a willing "ally" is just absurd.

If one has visited Yasukuni Shrine's Yushukan Museum (see here and here), it is striking how much Mr Bevers tale dovetails with that of Japan's right-wing apologists.

Oh, and DL Barch makes a valid point. In Korea, such people are called kvetchpats.

...

Yasukuni enshrinement mix-up

I imagine most of my readers are familiar with the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Originally meant to enshrine those who died fighting for the Japanese Emperor, turning them into kami gods, it became a source of contention and bad relations with Tokyo's neighbors when the shrine keepers chose to enshrine the fourteen Class-A war criminals who had been the architects of Imperial Japanese expansionism and brutality before and during World War II.

Adding fuel to the fire, the relatives of some of the Koreans and Taiwanese who were enshrined there after dying during service in the Imperial Japanese military have sought to have their loved ones removed (ditto with some Japanese family members).

The Yasukuni shrine keepers shrug their shoulders and say once a dead soldier has been made into a kami, there ain't nothing they can do about it. It's a bit of an angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin argument.

Well, speaking of pinheads, one Mr Kim is particularly ticked off about enshrinement at Yasukuni: He was never an Imperial soldier and, just as importantly, he's not dead.

From the Los Angeles Times:

For most of his life, Kim Hui-jong has kept what he considers a shameful secret. In 1944, as a teenager, he was abducted from his village in northern Korea by Japanese soldiers and forced to dig tunnels at a World War II military camp on the island of Saipan.

It would take him a decade of marriage to tell his wife about his past. Kim, 86, still often dreams of the battlefield shelling that severely damaged his hearing and the taunts of his captors: "You Koreans are like canned meat; we can take you anywhere and use you as we see fit."

He always considered his Japanese enslavement, and the two years he later spent as a U.S. prisoner of war, as a lifelong humiliation. Then, in 2005, Kim received a new insult he insists he still cannot bear: For decades, the former conscript learned, he has been counted among Japan's war dead and, because of an administrative error, his name is listed at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni shrine. He could no longer remain silent.

Many view Yasukuni as a symbol of Japanese militarist values that led millions to their deaths. Worse, Kim and other critics say, Shinto priests who control the shrine list Japanese leaders executed as war criminals in its ranks of the dead.

Just so we're clear, it's not Mr Kim to whom I referred as a pinhead.

Anyway, expect the Yasukuni shrine keepers to do drag their feet on this, if they do anything at all. The modus operandi in dealing with embarrassingly bad things from World War II is to ignore it, especially if it sets a slippery-slope precedent. This is why, for example, Tokyo continues to insist Tokto is Japan's, not South Korea's, because to do anything else would seem to weaken Japan's claim to islands disputed with Russia, China, Taiwan, etc.

Japan Times on the three right-wing Japanese lawmakers trying to make their way to Tokto

No animals were harmed in the making of this protest.

Tokto (aka Dokdo) is a big deal in South Korea, and Japanophiles and Korea critics are constantly telling us that no one in Japan really cares about the islets. Yet here we have opposition legislators trying to spark a Seoul-Tokyo row by entering the Republic of Korea and consequently being barred from entry before they even left, not to mention the Japan Times printing it as the top story of the day:

South Korean officials told the three that their visit could "trigger actions that would threaten public safety" and sought their swift return to Japan.

The lawmakers remained unconvinced and called on the officials to provide detailed explanations for denying their entry.

The trio were planning to inspect Ullŭngdo (Ulleungdo), the administrative and military base for the South Korean-controlled islets called Dokdo by South Korea and Takeshima by Japan, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The lawmakers said they do not intend to renew Japan's territorial claims to the disputed islets, but the South Korean government said the refusal was based on the immigration control law.

"Takeshima is Japanese territory," Shindo told South Korean media at the airport. "Our positions are different and we need to talk to each other on the issue." He also warned that Seoul's decision to deny them entry would evolve into a "big diplomatic problem."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano had expressed Japan's "deep regret" over the unusual step taken by South Korea and said Tokyo was making a last-ditch effort to urge Seoul to let the lawmakers in.

"The lawmakers intended to inspect the island legally and in light of our friendly relations, we very much regret that South Korea took such a measure," Edano said at a press conference.

I was on the fence about blocking these political agitators from entering, but when even the JT acknowledges they were essentially on some sort of reconnaissance mission (and not even of the territory they're claiming!), I say they're lucky they were just turned around at the airport.

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.

Like a good neighbor...

Reuters has an article on some South Koreans thinking twice about their financial outpouring of support for Japan after Tokyo pushed its claim to Tokto (Takeshima in Japan) yet again:

At first, Korean pop singer Kim Jang-hoon, dubbed "the angel of donation" for his habit of donating many of his concert proceeds to the poor and campaigns to promote his country, asked his fans to put aside their decades-old animosity toward Japan over Dokdo in the wake of the 9.0 March 11 disaster that has left nearly 28,000 dead or missing.

Many ordinary South Koreans responded generously, and a dozen K-pop stars donated more than $5 million.

But the mood soon darkened after a Japanese education panel authorised the publication of school textbooks that assert Japan's claims to the islets, which act as a stark reminder of Japan's brutal colonial rule over Korea from 1910-1945.

For many, this meant all donations were off.

Yeah, I agree that Tokyo really should have just let it go, at least this once, but I think that when it comes to responses like this...

A Seoul district office that raised about $10,000 for Japanese disaster relief changed its mind and sent most of the funds to a civic group promoting Korea's claims to the islets, which are also a symbol of South Korea standing up to its neighbour.

"I asked myself, why did Japan do this at this tragic moment. We had to discuss what to do next with this fund," said Ra Tae-sung, an official at the office in southwestern Seoul.

... I'd like to point out to whatever ku office that was, that the people in Japan who are suffering and in need of help from South Korea and other countries are entirely different from the right-wing politicians who feel obliged to keep bringing up Tokyo's historically questionable and currently unenforceable claim to the Tokto Islets and the seas surrounding them.

Funny?

And speaking of news and posts from 2010, "M" (who is from Kansai) just sent me the above BBC snippet (via YouTube) with only the following message:

It is sad that BBC treated the victim of the atomic bomb as a joke.

Indeed, I wrote about Tsutomu Yamaguchi just over a year ago, when he passed away and the above clip was broadcast. With my most recent trip to Hiroshima Peace Park still fresh in my head at that time, I don't imagine I would have found the BBC piece all that amusing.

Overdue books

Japan is returning to South Korea a bunch of volumes of historic texts that were looted from its Korean colony in the first half of twentieth century.

From the Chosun Ilbo:

Japan has agreed to return 1,205 volumes of priceless Korean texts including a collection of Chosun Dynasty royal protocols seized during its occupation of the peninsula between 1910 and 1945. Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan and his Japanese counterpart Seiji Maehara agreed to the deal in a phone conversation Monday evening, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

But archives containing the official seal of the Chosun dynasty court library and royal texts recording lectures by former kings will not be returned due to ongoing disputes over when and how they were spirited to Japan.

I guess this is one advantage of having a more friendly-minded approach to Japan's leadership (and vice-versa), sort of like what we used to have.

It may also be a fringe benefit of having a president who was born in Japan.

UPDATE:
The Yomiuri Shimbun also has the story.

An illustrated text titled The Protocols of the Office of Royal Seals, 
kept in Japan's Imperial Household Agency describes how to make 
the seal of the state of the Chosun Dynasty.
"Royal seal?" you ask. "That looks more like a turtle."

The facts were these...

This started out as a private email to a couple other bloggers, but in honor of the centennial of the Korean Empire joining Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, I thought I'd make a whole post out of it.

When certain folks (especially those with a baffling disdain for Korea and Koreans despite the apparently lavish lifestyle they get from being in the country) talk about how "the facts re Japanese contributions to Korean modernization are not really debatable," I'm reminded of two great old posts at Popular Gusts (this one and this one), about the "cultivation of foreign apologists" for Imperial Japan and the misleading "facts" they employ. The posts skewer some of the more popular claims made by such folks and paint, in my opinion, a more accurate picture of that period of history.

See, if "the facts" were so undebatable, then we wouldn't see apologists for Japanese Imperial expansionism giving Japan credit for aspects of modernization (like the introduction of Western medicine and hospitals or a system of modern education) that occurred before they took over. The posts are a good read, so take the time to wade through them. (And it gives me a second chance in as many days to mention Isabella Bird.)

Protestors mark 100th anniversary of Imperial Japanese annexation of Taehan Empire

Needless to say, it's not a happy occasion:

"We urge Japan to comprehensively address the unfortunate history between South Korea and Japan within this year," said Yang Soon-im, a leader of the activists.

At the rally in the Seoul park, Kim Young-il, president of an association of former independence fighters and their descendants, said in a speech that Japan should apologize more sincerely for the annexation and compensate its victims.

Many older Koreans still harbour strong resentment against Japan over the colonization. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were forced to fight as front-line soldiers, work in slave-labour conditions or serve as prostitutes in brothels operated by the Japanese military.

Earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan offered a renewed apology for the suffering caused by the colonization. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak later said that Seoul and Tokyo should never forget history but should also work together to develop a new future.

While it's true that many older Koreans harbor such resentment against Japan, that does not necessarily mean they harbor it against Japanese individuals. In fact, in my experience, many older Koreans hold far more nuanced views of the occupation than younger people precisely because they had positive experiences with Japanese individuals at that time and therefore make a distinction between Japanese people such as their neighbors or teachers and the often cruel Japanese authorities and their policies.

But looking back on that dark period is nothing if not murky. Apologists for Japan will say there has been apology after apology, though they don't always note that the "apologies" are mealy-mouthed expressions of "regret" over "unfortunate events" that are intended to evade statements of direct responsibility, while the conservative LDP leadership that has dominated Japanese politics since the war falls over itself to declare apologies that are direct, like those of socialist Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995, to be their personal statements alone and not the position of the Japanese government. They also fail to note how excuses and rationalizations for Imperial Japan's atrocities by Japanese government officials (such as claims of modernization that actually began before annexation) end up undermining the sentiment made by even the more insipid statements of regret.

Even the issue of compensation is murky, with the Japanese government in 1965 having settled with an undemocratically installed former military leader and former Imperial Japanese Army officer (i.e., Park Chunghee) to do an end-run around the actual victims of Imperial Japan or their families. That money, in the form of grants and loans that were to be repaid (i.e., not free money), was not given to the victims directly, though it did become a significant portion of the seed money to jump start the South Korean economy.

Even if the money had been paid directly to the victims, it would have been a paltry sum, and Tokyo may have been trying to avoid direct payments precisely for that reason (this was two decades after the end of the war, when Japan was well on its way back to the top). Still, Seoul should consider working out a way to now give that money (plus interest) directly to those people or their surviving family members.

But even then, Tokyo would not be off the hook. In 1965, the Japanese government was trying to write off the claims of victims of the government or military that at the time it refused to acknowledge existed, namely the so-called "Comfort Women." It wasn't until three decades after that that the Japanese government, its hand forced by Japanese scholars who dug up the documents that would become the smoking gun, admitted its involvement. So from an ethical standpoint, how could the Japanese government's 1965 agreement cover something that the Japanese government didn't even admit until the 1990s?

Like I said, it's murky. Some may bemoan that this kind of thing comes up every year, particularly around August 15, Liberation Day, and it's unfair that it gets rehashed again and again. But guess what? When tens of thousands die, that's what happens. Best not to invade your neighbors, hunt them down, grab their property, or force them into work that gets them killed.

And some ask, "When will the apologies be enough?" Really, if that's the question on your mind, then the purported "apologies" really aren't apologies at all. It's easy to make the claim it's just lip service then, and we're back to square one.

But if you really need an answer to that question, I'd say that until one "apology" is made for each person killed or maimed or otherwise truly victimized at the hands of Imperial Japan, then there's no business asking, "Isn't that enough already?"