This essay argues that Japanese assumptions about “friendship” with South Korea or the sharing of common values are mere illusions born of ignorance about the reality of South Korea’s historical education and state-driven anti-Japan consciousness.
The author recounts that although he personally felt a sense of closeness toward individual Koreans, he was struck by how even intelligent and gentle people would suddenly change expression when the subject turned to history.
He says he later discovered that this reaction was rooted in South Korean history textbooks, where Japanese are portrayed as “devils,” and where the history of Japan–Korea relations is framed as a false moral drama of “100 percent aggressor and 100 percent victim,” of “absolute evil and absolute justice.”
As a result of decades of such national indoctrination, the essay claims, South Korea has become something close to a religious faith of anti-Japanism, a kind of cult-state built on historical falsehood.
It concludes that Japan should demand that South Korea rewrite its history textbooks in accordance with fact, and that unless Koreans face historical truth, there can be neither a real future nor genuine improvement in Japan–Korea relations.

2019-03-18
In other words, it is better to think that on this earth, besides Christian nations, Islamic nations, and Buddhist nations, there also exists a fourth kind of state: an “Anti-Japan Creed Nation.”
South Korea is a cult group in and of itself.

What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
“Japan–Korea friendship” has never existed from the beginning.
Now then, it is not as though I have had no personal dealings with Koreans.
If I speak of my experience, it is that they felt “hardly like strangers at all.”
Around me, there are people who did business with Koreans and were deceived, robbed, or had payments defaulted on, but fortunately I myself have never once had an unpleasant experience.
So personally, I still think of the Koreans I know almost like relatives.
Perhaps the Japanese of a hundred years ago, who devoted themselves to the modernization of Korean society with a somewhat extraordinary degree of goodwill and sense of mission, were moved by the same sort of feeling.
To think, “They do not feel like strangers,” or “They seemed like long-separated brothers living in miserable circumstances,” may in fact have been closer to the truth.
However, even within such personal relationships, I found it strange that when the topic of history suddenly arose, even intelligent and mild-mannered Koreans would abruptly change expression.
It resembled the way a person abused in childhood suffers from flashbacks.
I learned the reason fifteen years ago, when I read translated South Korean history textbooks.
The Japanese were depicted as cruel and merciless “devils.”
Modern Japan was said to have done nothing to Korea except “massacre and plunder.”
The lies and fabrications of the South Korean government are that merciless.
I immediately sensed the danger.
Children, of course, grow up believing all of it to be fact.
This is equivalent to a “Demonic Japan” propaganda even worse than the wartime Japanese slogan of “the brutal Anglo-Americans.”
The Japan–Korea relationship depicted in South Korean historical education is, so to speak, one of “100 percent aggressor and 100 percent victim,” one of “absolute evil and absolute justice.”
It has become a cheap good-versus-evil story of the kind a counterfeit hero might invent.
Because Syngman Rhee seized dictatorial power as the first president, this sort of fiction truly became a national founding myth, and because that indoctrination has continued down to the present, even ordinary South Koreans have become mentally fused with this falsehood.
South Korea is an abnormal country that, as a state, has continued for sixty-five years a system of indoctrination that plants hatred and prejudice toward a specific people.
Moreover, it tries to force even Japanese people to accept falsehoods contrary to fact under the name of “correct historical awareness.”
Since the whole country believes things that are scientifically and objectively untrue, this has already entered the realm of “faith.”
In other words, it is better to think that on this earth, besides Christian nations, Islamic nations, and Buddhist nations, there also exists a fourth kind of state: an “Anti-Japan Creed Nation.”
South Korea is a cult group in and of itself.
That is why any Japanese person who seriously says that South Korea is a friendly country, or a partner sharing the same values, must be either profoundly ignorant, absurdly gullible, or one of their agents.
The truth is that it is one of the least friendly countries, and one with fundamentally different values.
Those pro-Korean people in Japan, or perhaps one should say subordinated-to-Korea people, are now flustered by South Korea’s “sudden” anti-Japan turn, saying things such as, “Japan and South Korea have always managed well until now,” or, “This is only conflict at the level of politicians and governments, and after a while we should be able to return to the friendly relationship we had before.”
This is exactly what is meant by saying, “There is no medicine for fools.”
South Korea has always been this kind of country, and the reason it is now picking fights one after another is simply that, because circumstances have changed, it no longer needs to conceal its true nature.
To begin with, there is a vast gap between what Japanese people imagine as Japan–Korea friendship and what Koreans imagine by it.
Japanese people imagine, literally, “an equal friendship.”
But among Koreans, the premise is a relationship of “100 percent aggressor and 100 percent victim,” and therefore when they speak of “friendship” or “cooperation,” what they mean is, “Japanese people should fully understand their position as aggressors.”
To put it another way, it means, “Serve the victim.”
Therefore, whether or not Japan and South Korea need reconciliation is a different dimension of the matter, but to believe that such reconciliation is readily possible is simply naive.
Personal exchanges and dialogue between Japanese and Koreans should certainly be encouraged, but one must not place excessive expectations on their effects.
That is just like defeating only the creatures attacking on the front lines while leaving untouched the mother body in the rear that keeps producing alien eggs one after another.
For such efforts to have any real effect, one must first defeat the mother body, namely the anti-Japan indoctrination of children.
However, no matter how gravely mistaken it may be, a country’s education is, after all, an internal matter.
If it can be reformed, only Koreans can reform it.
As for the likelihood of that, I cannot say.
Still, in the end, it is only an unscientific occultism that treats imitation and falsehood as “legitimate.”
If the light of truth is shone upon it, falsehood will gradually dissolve.
But in a certain sense, that would amount to the collapse of the very national structure of the Republic of Korea.
That is why the government fears the truth of history and, in effect, controls freedom of thought and speech and even resorts to silencing people.
Seen another way, that can also be taken as a kind of desperate last struggle.
Meanwhile, is not the attitude Japan should take already clear?
First of all, Japan should demand: “Rewrite the history textbooks in accordance with fact.”
At this point, talk of domestic affairs or anything of that sort no longer matters.
South Korea has until now planted hatred and prejudice toward Japan in its children while pretending, at the political level, to be a friend and partner.
In that sense, it can be said that it deceived Japan through a split-personality diplomacy and made clever use of it.
Most likely, inwardly, they were sticking out their tongues and thinking, “Manipulating the Japanese is easy.”
But from now on, a duplicitous attitude toward Japan will no longer work, one that on the surface says, “Japan and South Korea should cooperate with each other,” or “The truth is we do not really dislike Japan,” while behind the scenes proclaiming in public education that Japan is demonic.
We will not fall for that trick any longer.
Koreans who refuse to face the truth of history have no future.
The root must first be corrected.
Only then can the discussion begin.