A retrospective on the Im Seok-kyun affair and the Japanese intellectuals and media who supported him, examining how postwar self-denigrating historical views were exploited.

January 22, 2019
On October 10, at Kyoto’s Maruyama Park, Im Seok-kyun delivered an address at a rally attended by 10,000 people from across Kansai.
I do not know what became of him afterward.
A chapter I published on January 10, 2017 titled “Tsurumi Shunsuke, Kurata Reijiro, Yoshikawa Isamu and others hold a press conference at Gakushi Kaikan over the Im Seok-kyun issue, protesting his arrest and demanding asylum from the government,” has now entered the top ten in goo search rankings.
This is a chapter that all Japanese citizens should reread.
It reveals perfectly how foolish groups such as the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and Beheiren were.
It shows how they were manipulated by the Korean Peninsula, how their self-denigrating historical view and the anti-Japan ideology arising from it were exploited by the Korean Peninsula, and exposes the pseudo-moralism of Japan’s so-called cultural figures so completely that one could weep at the sheer absurdity and shame.
Few essays have so perfectly laid bare the reality of such pseudo-moralism among Japanese intellectuals.
The truths conveyed by this essay now shine a powerful light for Japan, the Japanese people, and the world.
As I have written before, I once suddenly realized, long after entering society, why I had been so deeply devoted to Ryūnosuke Akutagawa in my high-school days.
I had even written about his “Rashōmon” when instructed to submit something for the annual Miyagi Prefecture reading essay contest in the fine booklet published each year by my alma mater’s library.
I thought that whoever had posted this monumental work on the internet—the greatest library in human history—must also be a devoted reader of Akutagawa, like myself.
This was because the ending of that work was exactly like “Rashōmon.”
I first encountered the name Im Seok-kyun in a chapter beginning, “For verification of a paper to be written later, I searched again for Honda Katsuichi.”
When I searched the greatest library in human history, the internet, the following valuable essay appeared instantly.
It would not be surprising for a fraudster to appear in a student association room.
One day in 1975, a man appeared at the Japan Medical University student association room saying he had no train fare to Kagoshima and asking for a loan.
He offered his national health insurance card as collateral and asked to borrow money temporarily.
After some time, money was lent from the student association funds, and he left with the insurance card returned.
He then disappeared.
I never heard how the accounting shortfall was handled.
In 1969, Kyoto University Press published The Omura Detention Camp by Pak Chong-gong (Im Seok-kyun) in the “Korean Problem Series 1.”
Pak Chong-gong (Im Seok-kyun) was introduced as a South Korean revolutionary who had escaped execution under Syngman Rhee and crossed the Genkai Sea.
He toured among students agitating that those who supported him were revolutionary and those who did not were reactionary.
Various sects likely competed to express revolutionary support.
In short, there is no doubt that the people who now dominate the Asahi Shimbun and NHK are precisely such individuals—the mere end result of exam-elite students.
Since students strongly regarded North Korea as a Stalinist land, the appearance of a revolutionary from the South was something they wanted to welcome enthusiastically.
Eventually rumors spread that he was embezzling donations intended for the Omura detention camp and behaving arbitrarily, telling female students that the Japanese people bore the original sin of colonial rule and that obedience was revolutionary.
Inquiries reached me from Kyoto, but by then he had already disappeared.
I also heard he had a wife in Hokkaido.
Perhaps under another name, the “Association to Support Im Seok-kin” was founded on April 10, 1969, at Kyoto Rakuyō Kaikan with 40 participants.
On August 23, Im Seok-kin was re-detained, and Kyoto Beheiren and others protested to the Kobe Immigration Bureau.
On the 25th, Beheiren groups from across Kansai, the Overseas Chinese Youth Struggle Committee, and the Chūkaku-ha held two demonstrations in front of the Kobe Immigration Bureau with 500 participants; two were arrested.
Tsurumi Shunsuke, Kurata Reijiro, Yoshikawa Isamu and others held a press conference at Gakushi Kaikan announcing an appeal protesting Im’s arrest and demanding asylum.
On the 27th, Im Seok-kin was provisionally released.
On the 28th, rallies and demonstrations over the Im Seok-kin issue were held in Sapporo, Tokyo, Kobe, and Fukuoka.
In Kobe, 1,200 people participated and eight were arrested.
On October 10, Im Seok-kyun delivered an address at a rally attended by 10,000 people from across Kansai at Kyoto’s Maruyama Park.
I do not know what became of him afterward.