Published on April 17, 2019.
Based on an essay by Masayuki Takayama, this piece traces how Japan has repeatedly suffered whenever it became involved with the Korean Peninsula, through the Battle of Baekgang, the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Korean War.
It also criticizes NHK’s biased reporting and the distortion of Japanese discourse surrounding Korean Peninsula issues, asking what the Japanese people ought to learn from history.

2019-04-17
Unbelievably, it was NHK that put such a man, like an agent of the Korean Peninsula, on the air for about a year as the host of an art program.
This is the Sino-Japanese War.
Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which Japan concluded after winning it, reads, “Korea’s independence shall be recognized.”
This is the chapter I published on 2018-06-04 under that title.
It was a chapter in which I sent to the world an essay by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The parts between asterisks and the emphases in the text are mine.
There is soon to be a U.S.-North Korea summit, they say.
And so the leaders of North and South Korea meet, and North Korea and China meet.
But Japan is not invited, Japan is left outside the mosquito net, this is a failure of Abe diplomacy, and if things go on like this Japan will be isolated, Tetsuro Fukuyama is making a great fuss.
On the other hand, there are also many voices saying that it is better not to get involved with such countries.
The first time Japan was drawn into trouble on that peninsula was the Battle of Baekgang.
Baekje had been defeated by Silla, and its surviving retainers came asking for help.
Unlike Kang Sang-jung, the Japanese are loyal, so when they went to help, a great Tang army was waiting there.
As for Kang Sang-jung, the correctness of my intuition when I first saw this man long ago on “Asamade Nama TV” is also made clear, to a thoroughly sickening degree, by Kang Sang-jung’s absurd remarks in this month’s Series No. 18, “Biographies of Japan’s Hollow Men: Hiroshi Sekiguchi,” the famous host of Sunday Morning who loves “friendship” with North Korea.
There, his true nature as an agent of the Korean Peninsula is at last fully revealed.
It was Ōkoshi who said he “respected” such a man and brought him on as a commentator on watch9, which he was hosting at the time…
And that was not all…
Unbelievably, it was NHK that put such a man, like an agent of the Korean Peninsula, on the air for about a year as the host of an art program.
NHK, which gleefully broadcast the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal held in Tokyo in 2000, where genuine North Korean operatives played the role of prosecutors…
And where almost all were agents of the Korean Peninsula…
And where Ikeda Eriko and Nagai Akira were listed as sponsors…
It is only natural that NHK has continued to carry out biased reporting without interruption.
The time has long since come for all Japanese people…
To realize that the final stage in the production of news programs…
Has been taken over by operatives and agents of the Korean Peninsula…
To notice the abnormality of this broadcaster…
And to set about correcting NHK.
The other side too had come out at Silla’s request, and in the end it was Tang and Japan that fought.
The peninsula juts out from Japan’s flank like a dagger.
Japan regarded it as a security problem to have the Yi Dynasty Korea there as something like a puppet of China, and urged them toward self-reliance and independence.
The Korean dynasty split, each side called in Japan and China, and before anyone knew it Japan and China were fighting a grave war.
This was the Sino-Japanese War.
Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which Japan concluded after winning it, reads, “Korea’s independence shall be recognized.”
Various wars have occurred throughout the world, but there has never been another example of a war fought in order to have another country’s independence recognized.
And yet, after Japan went that far for them, what independent Korea did was to draw Russia into its country and provide the Russian Navy with a base at Masanpo, right in front of Tsushima.
Before Japan realized it, it was fighting the Russo-Japanese War, staking the fate of the nation against the world’s strongest Russian Army and a Russian Navy four times the size of the Japanese fleet.
In these two wars Japan suffered 120,000 war dead, but the very Koreans who had set these events in motion spent the whole time merely standing by and watching.
Ahead of the coming U.S.-North Korea summit, Associate Professor Elizabeth Stanley of Georgetown University contributed an article titled, “The Koreans, before they know it, have slipped into supporting roles,” pointing out their crafty nature of drawing other countries in and then, before long, disappearing from center stage.
The example she offers is the Korean War, which began in 1950.
Kim Il-sung, a Soviet puppet, obtained Stalin’s approval and in the early hours of June 25 crossed the 38th parallel in one rush, with such momentum that he seemed ready to drive Syngman Rhee, who had fled to Pusan, into the Sea of Japan.
The U.S. military entered the war.
Thanks also to Japanese wisdom, the Inchon landing succeeded, and the tide turned.
The U.S. forces reached as far as the Yalu River, but then Chinese forces entered, and in the end it became a war between the United States and China.
Meanwhile, the Koreans quickly moved into supporting roles, and Syngman Rhee established the Rhee Line, occupied Takeshima, seized 328 Japanese fishing boats, killed 44 fishermen, detained about 4,000 people, and abused them by cramming as many as 20 into narrow prison cells.
As a condition for releasing the fishermen, Syngman Rhee had 472 criminals released, including Korean murderers who had been imprisoned in Japan, and had them granted permanent residence rights.
When one thinks about what their descendants are now doing in Japan, does it not send a chill down one’s spine.
Who can say that their descendants are not involved in cases of fatal abuse or brutal murders.
And yet the Tokyo-centered media, which do not report the truth, pour down torrential coverage as though each were the greatest incident in the world.
The agents of China and the Korean Peninsula, together with China and the Korean Peninsula themselves, who are helping to divide Japan through anti-Japanese Japanese, have repeatedly induced U.N. human rights bodies to issue human-rights recommendations against Japan, thereby preventing Japan from becoming a leader alongside the United States…
They have halted the progress of the Turntable of Civilization and have created the unstable and extremely dangerous world of today.
They leave wars to other countries, while they themselves pursue selfish national interests behind the scenes.
Professor Stanley also sees that “the two Koreas are now desperately contriving the same kind of scheme.”
Professor Hiroshi Furuta of the University of Tsukuba, who has deep knowledge of Korean affairs, recommends for the Japanese the “three must-nots” in dealing with the peninsula: “do not teach, do not help, do not get involved.”
In fact, Japan received nothing but damage from involvement with the peninsula, but in the period when it did not get involved, namely during the Korean War, aside from the damage caused by the Rhee Line, it was blessed not only with the Korean War special procurement boom but also with the great good fortune of a change in U.S. occupation policy.
MacArthur had been carrying out a dismantlement policy designed to ensure that Japan would never again become a threat to the white powers, dragging its industrial level back to the early Meiji era, in other words to a time when all it could make were pots and kettles.
That was the role of Edwin Pauley of the postwar reparations mission, and after the first-stage dismantling of heavy industry and the aircraft industry had been completed, and just as the next stage was beginning, that war broke out.
Without Japanese technology, the U.S. military could not fight.
The dismantlement of Japan came to an end.
Fukuyama is desperately trying to drag Japan in.
But the Japanese people will probably not be taken in by his words.
Because history has taught again and again that the best course is not to get involved with them.
This article will continue.