This essay critically examines the pattern by which the Asahi Shimbun, through its role in the repatriation movement of Korean residents in Japan, its comfort women coverage, its minimization of the abduction issue, and even its recent Moritomo-Kake reporting, has repeatedly acted in ways favorable to North Korea.
Using Masayuki Takayama’s argument as its core, it highlights how the substitution of “comfort women” for “abductions” dulled Japan’s sense of security and deprived the Japanese people of opportunities to confront the North Korean threat.

2019-04-08
Even Yayori Matsui, formerly of Asahi, held the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal and clamored that the Japanese should seriously think about the comfort women issue that was right there rather than the merely alleged abduction issue.
The very existence of people who still subscribe to such a newspaper is surely one of the wonders of the world.
A chapter I published on 2019-04-05 under that title has today entered the official hashtag ranking at No. 30 for Hanshin.
A chapter I published on 2018-10-26 under the title, In fact, in 1987 Kim Hyon-hui called herself Mayumi Hachiya and blew up a Korean airliner in midair, has today entered the official hashtag ranking at No. 46 for Hanshin.
A friend of mine, one of the great book lovers, bought me this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho.
When I read the following essay by Masayuki Takayama, I was astonished.
Takayama Masayuki and I are in resonance.
Everything in this essay except the headings must be emphasized.
It is a historic piece of writing.

The crimes of the Asahi Shimbun.

After the period of Japanese rule, North Korea took the northern half of the peninsula.
That was in itself a good choice, because Japan had placed heavy industry such as steelmaking in the North and had built the Supung Dam on the Yalu River, one of the largest dams in the world.
If Kim Il-sung had merely made use of it, the national finances would have remained in surplus, yet foolishly he started the Korean War.
The North Korean army was driven back by the U.S. forces, most of the factories that Japan had gone to the trouble of building were destroyed, and 1.3 million people were killed.
After the armistice, Kim Il-sung issued the even more foolish slogan of the “Chollima Movement,” demanding that rice and steel production both be doubled.
But the workers had died in war.
Where was the missing labor to be obtained from.
As if to answer that question, the Asahi Shimbun began a campaign directed at Korean residents in Japan proclaiming that “North Korea is a paradise on earth.”
Its correspondent Hiroshi Iwadare sent back paradise reports saying that “the factories are full of energy and the people’s lives are guaranteed.”
The reporting that “the North is a paradise” continued for nearly twenty years, and even Sayuri Yoshinaga recommended repatriation to the North in The Street of the Cupola.
As a result, ninety thousand Korean residents in Japan returned to what they did not know was hell.
The labor shortage in the North was solved.

Around that time Kim Jong-il began abducting Japanese people.
Japanese people were highly trusted.
They could go anywhere in the world.
In that case, why not disguise operatives as Japanese and carry out terrorism.
If the terrorism succeeded, Japan would be blamed and Kim Jong-il could laugh.
In fact, in 1987 Kim Hyon-hui called herself Mayumi Hachiya and blew up a Korean airliner in midair.
But when “Mayumi” was captured, the operation of disguising terrorists as Japanese was exposed, and it also became clear that many Japanese had been abducted as preparation for it.
When North Korea’s position became precarious, the Asahi moved again.
Takashi Uemura turned Kim Hak-sun, who had been sold by a procurer, into a “comfort woman forcibly taken away by the Japanese military” and wrote an article about her.
Pursuing the matter, Asahi had Chuo University professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi speak of “military involvement in comfort women,” and made a commotion by calling it a state crime.
Kiichi Miyazawa, alarmed, shelved pursuit of the abductions and turned toward neighborly diplomacy.
The Asahi had people such as Yasuhiko Yoshida cheer, “The North does not abduct people,” and, “Kim Hak-sun matters more than Kim Hyon-hui.”
But it became impossible to deny that thirteen-year-old Megumi Yokota had been abducted.
At the Red Cross talks, whenever the subject of abductions came up, “the North kicked its chair back and refused discussion,” as Asahi itself reported.
To irritated Japanese readers, Asahi preached in an editorial that “the abduction suspicions are nothing more than an obstacle to normalizing relations between Japan and North Korea,” urging them not to entertain unnecessary suspicions.
Even Yayori Matsui, formerly of Asahi, held the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal and shouted that the Japanese should seriously think about the comfort women issue that was right there rather than the merely alleged abduction issue.
One of the politicians who has repeatedly made exactly the same statements as Matsui is Kiyomi Tsujimoto.
It was later established that the Korean who supported that tribunal was a North Korean operative.
Ten years after the substitution of “comfort women rather than abductions,” Kim Jong-il casually admitted the abductions.
The Japanese unquestionably missed the moment when they ought to have become truly angry.

The third-generation ruler Kim Jong-un killed his uncle and his brother, then declared that he would turn “Tokyo and New York into seas of fire,” conducted nuclear tests, and launched ICBMs one after another.
Just when the Japanese had begun seriously to think about national security, the Asahi appeared once more.
At that time, those who acted together with the Asahi Shimbun were Kiyomi Tsujimoto and Mizuho Fukushima.
All men of discernment will, through this historic essay by Masayuki Takayama, become even more convinced of what sort of people they really are.
“If Akie Abe gave a lecture at Kagoike’s school, then the Finance Ministry gave a discount.”
“A friend of the Prime Minister created a veterinary school that had been regulated for half a century.”
This newspaper had said that the abduction suspicions, despite all that evidence, should not be believed.
But in Moritomo and Kake, Asahi changed its tune and said that there was no evidence at all, yet suspicion alone was enough.
Foolish television and the Diet made an uproar over Moritomo and Kake for a year and a half, neglecting the nation’s security entirely.
The “serious Japanese” whom the North had feared faded away for that reason.

Why is it that Asahi always moves in ways convenient to North Korea.
At the Moritomo-Kake level of suspicion, there is more than enough reason to suspect that Asahi sent Korean residents in Japan back to the North for North Korea’s sake and obstructed the investigation into the abduction of Japanese people.
Come to think of it, in the same year as the bombing of the Korean airliner, Asahi’s Hanshin bureau was attacked on Constitution Day.
Since then, Asahi has likened itself to a martyr who bled for constitutional protection and has rebuked constitutional revision.
But in light of the relationship between the two sides, does that incident not begin to look like a return favor from the North done for the sake of the Asahi Shimbun.
The very existence of people who still subscribe to such a newspaper is surely one of the wonders of the world.