As a reprint of a chapter originally posted on Dec 5, 2018, this piece examines events in South Korea through the lens of history textbooks, domestic propaganda, and the logic of military rule. Using a cited article by Takaaki Yamada, it traces how anti-Japan narratives were preserved and intensified as a political tool—redirecting public resentment outward and weaponizing “textbook disputes” for leverage. The argument concludes that a government that used textbook issues to manufacture conflict has no incentive to revise anti-Japan education on its own.

February 1, 2019.
As a means to that end, he picked a fight over the textbook issue—why would a man like that ever “revise” anti-Japan education.
A chapter posted on December 5, 2018, titled, “What Is Happening in South Korea Now Will Only Make Sense Once You Know These Facts,” has now entered the top four in Ameba’s search rankings.
Shocked and appalled by President Lee Myung-bak’s behavior toward the end of his term, I wondered what kind of country South Korea really was, and I searched online about South Korea and the Korean Peninsula…in one hour, the reality of the peninsula became clear.
For me—an Asahi Shimbun reader educated under the postwar system—this was the first time I learned the true nature of South Korea, something I had never understood at all.
As for North Korea, even without searching, anyone can see that it is a country so dreadful that words cannot describe it.
A moment ago, I found yet another article that embodies the essence of the Internet, the greatest library in human history.
What is happening in South Korea now should only make sense once you know these facts.
In other words, if you do not know these facts, you will not understand Koreans—and that is extremely dangerous for Japanese people.
Just as I personally encountered an evil so great that it led me to a serious illness in which I nearly lost my life, Japan, in truth, has continued to encounter this evil for a long time…Japan has continued to be exposed to it.
Not only toward Japan; they have used the United States and the United Nations as their main battlefield, and have continued to spread their evil.
The truth revealed by this laborious work is the true identity of anti-Japan propaganda.
Against Japan—which, as a matter of divine providence, is a country where the Turntable of Civilization is turning, and which must lead the world alongside the United States—
the world has overlooked, for seventy years after the war, the fact that countries like the Korean Peninsula and China—nations of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies”—have continued a Nazism called anti-Japan education.
The time has long since come for us to realize that God’s anger at that very fact is what keeps the world unstable and full of unending conflict.
That I…inevitably…appeared like this, carrying the Turntable of Civilization, was—beyond anything even I or my readers could have imagined—actually something of great importance for Japan and the world.
Below is the article I discovered.
It was after reading South Korean history textbooks.
Japanese people were depicted as cold-blooded “devils.”
Modern Japan was portrayed as having done “nothing but slaughter and plunder” to Korea.
“Why Did South Korea Rewrite Its History? — Considering the Motives and Background (Part Two),” by Takaaki Yamada.
The Rhee Syngman era, which became the true beginning of South Korea’s misfortune.
Now, let us return to the main point.
With Japan’s defeat, administrative control over Korea was transferred from the Government-General to the United States.
At first, factions squabbled over nation-building, and the Soviet Union quickly installed a puppet.
Although the provisional government and the independence forces themselves were not recognized, Rhee Syngman—personally—was part of the U.S.-educated group and had lobbied in the United States, and in the end he was elevated as the head of an anti-communist puppet regime.
However, the selfish demand to “include Korea among the Allied powers” was rejected.
It was deemed that those who had not fought and shed blood had no right to push themselves forward.
Therefore, when Koreans call themselves “a victorious nation” or “an Allied nation,” it is simply contrary to fact.
It is hard not to feel sympathy regarding the fact that this man seized dictatorial power as the first president.
The period from his return to Korea to his exile was a “dark age,” and it is abnormal that modern Koreans lack that memory.
In many senses, Rhee Syngman is the root of all evils, and his era is precisely what South Korean history education depicts as “Japanese imperial rule.”
The first atrocity committed by Rhee Syngman was the “Jeju Island incident”—in short, a massacre of communists and islanders suspected of communism.
As a result, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and tens of thousands more fled to Japan and settled there.
The massacres continued thereafter, and the island’s population plummeted.
Though smaller in scale, similar massacres were also carried out in other regions.
Among Rhee Syngman’s war crimes against Japan, the invasion and seizure of Japan’s territory Takeshima and the massacre of Japanese fishermen are well known, but in fact, even before that, he tried to invade Tsushima.
He had gathered forces at the southern tip of Korea for that purpose when North Korea launched its lightning invasion.
Since he could massacre even his own people without hesitation, it is not hard to imagine that the South Korean military would have carried out a major massacre in Tsushima as well.
When the Korean War broke out, Rhee Syngman accelerated his paranoia about internal enemies and executed large numbers of people registered with the “Bodo League,” an organization meant to “re-educate” communists and their families.
The number of those massacred by the military and police is unknown, but it is said to have exceeded one million.
Not only was it obscured by the war, but it continued to be covered up under subsequent military regimes.
Initially, the South Korean army was cornered in the southern part of the peninsula, but with U.S. intervention it recovered, and four months later reached the Yalu River on the China–North Korea border.
Yet the war—expected to end with North Korea’s collapse—was pushed back to the 38th parallel once again due to Chinese intervention, and ultimately lasted three years.
As a result, millions of military personnel and civilians became casualties, and most of the Korean Peninsula was devastated.
Notably, South Korea has never demanded even a single word of “facing the past” or “reckoning” from China, the very country that prolonged the war and increased the casualties.
Even after that, Rhee Syngman clung to power as a dictator until the mid-1960s.
He purged not only communists but anyone who opposed him as political criminals, and he thoroughly suppressed demonstrations and protest movements.
Koreans who remembered the Japanese era were outraged, saying, “Where is the ‘liberation’? Isn’t this society far worse than under Japanese rule?”
Rhee Syngman crushed this movement through terror politics—control of thought and speech, a denunciation system, secret police, and more.
In this way, he monitored and suppressed pro-Japan sentiments and speech, forced the generation that had experienced the Japanese era to fall silent out of fear, attempted to create an intergenerational divide, and used media and public education to implant “false memories” in children.
During the Pacific War, Korea was not bombed, had virtually no conscription (though a small number were conscripted, the war ended before they were deployed), and faced only requisitioning of goods and forced labor—treatment extraordinarily favorable for a “colony.”
As a result, by the end of the war the Japanese mainland had returned to ashes after producing vast numbers of war dead, while Korea was left almost unscathed.
In other words, after the war, the economic and social conditions of Japan and Korea were completely reversed.
Yet by the time Rhee Syngman left, South Korea had fallen into the ranks of the poorest countries, and their conditions had reversed once again.
In the end, Rhee Syngman contributed nothing to the development of South Korean society or its economy; he merely wielded dictatorial power, imposed tyranny, massacred vast numbers of his own people, and impoverished the nation.
Moreover, even now the South Korean government conceals this shameful history, while fabricating massacres that never occurred by the Japanese military and teaching children false history—does that not make it something like an accomplice.
Why was a false national history passed down.
After Rhee Syngman went into exile, South Korea was chaotic for a time, but the one who ultimately seized power was Park Chung-hee.
As is well known, he was a former officer of the old army, and by concluding the Japan–Korea Basic Treaty he normalized relations and obtained enormous funds from Japan.
Park promoted heavy industries such as steel and petrochemicals and expanded social infrastructure, achieving high economic growth known as the “Miracle on the Han River.”
Of course, if there are Japanese funds exceeding twice the national budget, and a neighbor who, with a sense of mission, teaches technology and know-how step by step, then for diligent Koreans it is not that difficult to produce a “miracle.”
Thus, not once but twice, South Korea was able to escape poverty through Japan’s assistance and cooperation.
Yet President Park Chung-hee also did not correct the propaganda that made Japan absolute evil.
Because he thoroughly suppressed anti-government demonstrations and movements, he became the target of resentment for some citizens.
For a military dictatorship that inevitably creates internal friction, it is essential to have an external target toward which people’s hatred and dissatisfaction can be diverted.
North Korea or communists were not sufficient.
After all, many anti-government activists had sympathies there.
They needed an “enemy of the people” that transcended ideological divisions.
Perhaps for such political motives, Park Chung-hee inherited demonization education of Japan as it was.
Moreover, he turned all the achievements made possible by Japan’s economic assistance into his own accomplishments, so unlike the image generally believed in Japan, it is hard to call him a fair person.
Worse still, it seems he added something extra to public education.
That was the cultivation of pride of the type “our nation has been great since ancient times”—in other words, he apparently strengthened a self-glorifying view of history (though I note that I have no materials at hand and this is only hearsay).
However, that also meant, in reverse, disparaging Japan as a “culturally backward country.”
Because the superiority of one’s own people is highlighted through comparison with others, the comparison target could not be China, and so it became Japan of ancient and medieval times.
South Korean children are taught things like, “Our ancestors taught the Japanese how to do X,” or “In the past, we were more advanced than Japan.”
As examples of advanced culture said to have been transmitted from Korea: in ancient times, rice cultivation, weaving, architecture, Buddhism, paper, and writing; during Hideyoshi’s invasion, ceramic production techniques; and in the Edo period, medicine, Confucian learning, calligraphy, and painting through Joseon diplomatic missions.
In this way, by relativizing themselves against Japan, they come to hold ethnic superiority, believing that “until the Meiji Restoration, Korea was the culturally advanced nation,” or that “our ancestors were teachers who civilized the barbaric Japanese.”
Then, because Hideyoshi’s invasion and modern Japan’s actions are heavily emphasized, they naturally grow indignant, believing they “repaid恩 with hostility.”
Thus the foundation is completed for a “strange history education” that nurtures both superiority toward Japan and a sense of victimhood, continuing into the present.
Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, who came later, were also from the same military academy lineage as Park and continued anti-Japan education.
The reasons are likely similar to those above.
A military regime inevitably needs a target that will absorb people’s hatred.
Moreover, Chun Doo-hwan was a man who carried out the suppression of citizens in incidents like Gwangju.
He also wanted to replicate Park’s “miracle” and attempted to extract enormous economic aid from Japan.
As a means to that end, he picked a fight over the textbook issue—why would a man like that ever revise anti-Japan education.
In 1988, South Korea finally transitioned to a democratic system.
In principle, freedom of thought and speech was largely guaranteed.
However, “false memories” had been fully established as a fait accompli through forty years of domestic propaganda, and it was already too late.
Koreans had become spiritually unified with the “father of the nation.”
Now, independence activists are the identity of the Korean people.
In other words, ordinary citizens believe, “We bravely fought the devil called Japanese imperial rule and won,” and as guardians of that myth, it has become no longer easy to overturn it.
A “Japan–Korea friendship” that never existed from the beginning.
Now, it is not that I had no personal relationships with Koreans.
From my experience, it was a feeling of “I cannot think of them as strangers.”
Around me, there are people who say they were deceived in business with Koreans, copied, or not paid, but fortunately I have never had a bad experience even once.
So personally, I still think of the Koreans I know as if they were relatives.
Perhaps it was from such feelings that Japanese people a hundred years ago devoted themselves to modernizing Korean society with a somewhat extraordinary goodwill and sense of mission.
“It didn’t feel like dealing with strangers,” or “it looked like a long-lost sibling living in misery”—that may, in fact, be the truth.
However, even within such personal relationships, I found it strange that even intelligent and gentle Koreans would suddenly change their expression when the topic happened to turn to history.
It resembled the way someone abused in childhood is tormented by flashbacks.
I learned the reason fifteen years ago, when I read a translated South Korean history textbook.
Japanese people were depicted as cold-blooded “devils.”
Modern Japan was described as having done “nothing but slaughter and plunder” to Korea.
The lies and fabrications of the South Korean government are that ruthless.
I immediately sensed the danger.
Children, of course, grow up believing it is all fact.
This is equivalent to a “demon-Japan” propaganda even beyond the “brutal U.S. and U.K.” propaganda that Japan promoted during the war.
To be continued.