The text frames the forced-labor issue as not only the result of South Korea’s Supreme Court “running wild,” but also as something Japan helped “set the table” for—calling it a “match pump.”
On “forced mobilization,” it cites a claim that the postwar Chōren (later Chongryon) drew major funding from unpaid-wage claims against Japanese companies, with most money not reaching the workers but being diverted into organizational financing.
It links postwar structures—transport abuse, scholarship organizations, university routes, and today’s academia/media activism—while warning that alias-based overseas activity spreads false narratives that foreigners accept as “Japanese testimony.”
It argues the comfort-women and forced-labor campaigns share the same roots, and that inaction has enabled conditions for “second and third Yoshida Seiji” figures to emerge.

2019-01-04

Just as with the comfort-women issue, there is a strong possibility that lawsuit brokers will work behind the scenes in the forced-labor issue.
But behind this ruling, it is not only that South Korea’s Supreme Court ran wild; there is also an aspect in which Japan helped set the table.
Otaka.
Exactly.
It’s a match pump.
One more point on “forced mobilization”: Mr. Kim Chan-jŏng, a former Chongryon-affiliated figure (a second-generation Zainichi non-fiction writer), makes an interesting observation.
It concerns the abundant funding sources of Chōren, which was launched under GHQ directives after the war (later Chongryon—one could even call it a separate action unit of the Japanese Communist Party).
He says: “Its greatest source of funds was unpaid wages and the like of forced laborers who were returning home.
By the end of 1946, under the name of the head of Chōren’s Central Labor Department, claims for unpaid wages were sent to Japanese companies that had employed those forcibly mobilized.
The total amount claimed reached 43,660,000 yen, and Chōren collected substantial sums from Japanese companies; most of it did not reach the hands of the forcibly mobilized, but was diverted into Chōren’s operating funds” (from Chongryon, Shincho Shinsho).
Takayama.
That’s a very interesting story.
Come to think of it, in 1945, an organization called the Federation of Koreans in Japan was formed.
It later split into Mindan and Chongryon, but the person who created the foundation was Kim Ch’ŏnhae.
And the theme he set for the federation was—believe it or not—“Make Japan a country where we can live comfortably” (laughs).
Otaka.
And hasn’t it turned out exactly that way.
They are treated so preferentially that if you point out, “That’s unfair,” you are told it is “hate,” and the issue cannot be examined.
And speaking of “hate,” in issues like the comfort-women matter, one-sided false information has been spread overseas, and we have fallen into the upside-down situation in which all Japanese people are victims of hate speech.
Takayama.
That’s really true.
Whose country do they think Japan is.
As soon as the federation was launched, in Osaka they issued tickets one after another because “Zainichi can ride national and private railways for free.”
Eisaku Satō, who was then director of Osaka’s railway bureau, was astonished that there was almost no revenue in the Osaka district, and learned of the Zainichi outrages.
He apparently managed to crush it, but the federation also created scholarship associations, and the children of Zainichi Koreans were made able to enter Hosei, Meiji, and Chuo Universities freely.
Otaka.
Is that really true.
Takayama.
In particular, the university with a high reputation among Zainichi was Hosei University.
Otaka.
Wow—there’s still that current today.
Mr. Jirō Yamaguchi, who said, “Abe is not human. I’ll cut him down—,” is a professor at Hosei University’s Faculty of Law.
Takayama.
A professor who receives hundreds of millions of yen in KAKENHI research funds from the government and shouts anti-government slogans.
And on top of that, the president is the thoroughly red Yūko Tanaka.
Otaka.
I see—the famous “Sunday Morning” (TBS) faction (laughs).
In any case, the Japanese government, which has kept repeating failures in negotiations with the Korean government over historical perceptions, should say this to the Korean government from now on:
“From now on, any compensation claims concerning forced mobilization should be made entirely to the Korean government or to Chongryon” (burst of laughter).
Inflow Koreans.
Takayama.
Ever since Korea was founded in 1948, that country has always done nothing but strange things.
Before that, during the 36 years of Japanese rule, it was “kofuku-geikō”—people rejoiced in peaceful, comfortable lives—and rice was harvested sufficiently.
Food and jobs were abundant, and people lived satisfied lives.
They say Koreans were colonized, but if they were truly colonial subjects, they would never have been allowed to come and go freely to the suzerain country (Japan).
Yet they came and went freely, and even obtained jobs without discrimination (laughs).
Otaka.
The way Korean women—who in the Yi dynasty era were discriminated against under the saying “Anyone other than the yangban is not a person”—were vividly enjoying life can be understood as if in one’s hands, from Osamu Tajima’s So Bright Was Korean Rule, Told Through 300 Unique Advertisements (Businesssha) (see p. 164).
Takayama.
In 1945, an atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, and one major city vanished, but at that time, Hiroshima’s population was about 350,000.
Of those, Koreans were about 80,000.
Koreans who had entered Japan had no jobs in rural areas, so they all flowed into the cities.
Even so, the figure that one in five Hiroshima citizens were inflow Koreans is astonishing.
If you think of it that way, it makes sense that many Korean victims emerged from the atomic bombing.
Otaka.
So that many Koreans were in Japan’s cities.
Takayama.
Hard to believe, but at the time there were regular ships going back and forth linking Jeju Island and Osaka’s Ikaino.
Otaka.
It has become Ikuno Ward now, forming a Korean town.
It is the hometown of Ko Yong-hui, Kim Jong-un’s biological mother, and of Mun Se-gwang, who assassinated Park Chung-hee’s wife Yuk Yŏngsu.
I visited several times for reporting; there were churches where Asahi’s reporter Uemura gave lectures, Chongryon and Mindan, and meeting places for people who fled from Jeju Island, and it left me with the impression that rather than “Ikaino,” it was more like “Ika-i-no”—a different world (laughs).
Takayama.
Those inflow Koreans are now making noise, saying they were forcibly mobilized laborers.
That they are pitiful victims.
Otaka.
And Japanese people are helping them, which is unbearable.
We do not know how many of the people engaging in anti-Japan activities under Japanese names are, in fact, what nationality.
Especially when they operate overseas under aliases and pour out false information that demeans Japan, it becomes impossible to contain.
Even foreigners are deceived, thinking, “If it’s Japanese testimony, it must be true.”
Because such activists have been left unattended, we have allowed conditions in which second and third Yoshida Seiji can be born.
Takayama.
Even Katsuichi Honda is still alive and well, doing as he pleases.
Otaka.
When I looked up the names of activists involved in the forced-labor issue this time, there are indeed people who overlap with the comfort-women propaganda faction.
They are anti-Japan maniacs.
Takayama.
So the root is one (laughs).
Otaka.
Just as with the comfort-women issue, there is a strong possibility that lawsuit brokers will work behind the scenes in the forced-labor issue.
In the comfort-women case, Ms. Yang Soon-im, the mother-in-law of Mr. Takashi Uemura and the chair of the Association of Bereaved Families of Pacific War Victims, formed in 2010 a “Private Claims Lawsuit Group Against Japan,” and