Centered on an essay by Masayuki Takayama, this piece exposes how Asahi Shimbun, through the repatriation campaign for Koreans in Japan, the comfort women narrative, the abduction issue, and the Moritomo-Kake reporting, consistently steered public opinion in ways advantageous to North Korea.
It traces this chain of historical developments and media crimes, questioning the very nature of Asahi Shimbun itself.

2019-04-05
The fact that there are still people subscribing to such a newspaper must be one of the wonders of the world.

A chapter I published on 2018-10-26 under the title, “In fact, in 1987, Kim Hyon-hui, using the name Mayumi Hachiya, blew up a Korean airliner in midair,” entered the official hashtag ranking today at No. 46 for Hanshin.
A friend of mine, one of the most avid readers I know, bought this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho for me.
When I read the following essay by Masayuki Takayama, I was astonished.
Masayuki Takayama and I are in resonance.
Everything in this essay except the headline must be emphasized.
It is a historic piece of writing.

The Crimes of Asahi Shimbun

After Japanese rule, North Korea took the northern half of the peninsula.
That was actually a fortunate choice, because Japan had placed heavy industry such as steelmaking in the north and had built the Sup’ung Dam on the Yalu River, one of the largest in the world.
If Kim Il-sung had simply used those assets, the national finances would have remained in the black, but foolishly he started the Korean War.
The North Korean army was driven back by the U.S. military, 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 launched the even more foolish “Chollima Movement,” ordering that both rice and steel production be doubled.
But the workforce had died in the war.
Where was the missing labor to be found?
As if answering that need, Asahi Shimbun launched its “North Korea is a paradise on earth” campaign aimed at Koreans in Japan.
Special correspondent Hiroshi Iwadare sent back glowing reports saying that “the factories are full of vitality and people’s livelihoods are guaranteed.”
The “North is paradise” reporting continued for nearly twenty years, and Sayuri Yoshinaga, too, recommended repatriation to the North in The Street with a Cupola.
As a result, 90,000 Koreans in Japan returned to their homeland without knowing it was hell.
North Korea’s labor shortage was solved.

Around that time, Kim Jong-il began abducting Japanese.
Japanese people were highly trusted.
They could go anywhere in the world.
So then, let us disguise agents 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, using the name Mayumi Hachiya, blew up a Korean airliner in midair.
But Mayumi was captured, and the plot of “disguising agents as Japanese and committing terrorism” was exposed, and it also became clear that many Japanese had been abducted as preparation for it.
When North Korea’s position became precarious, 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 accordingly.
Following that, he had Chuo University professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi speak of “military involvement in comfort women,” and made noise about it as a state crime.
Kiichi Miyazawa was shocked, shelved pursuit of the abduction issue, and shifted toward neighborly diplomacy.
Asahi had Yasuhiko Yoshida and others cheer on the line that “the North does not abduct people” and that “Kim Hak-sun matters more than Kim Hyon-hui.”

But it became impossible to completely deny that 13-year-old Megumi Yokota had been abducted.
At the Red Cross talks, whenever the subject of abductions came up, “the North kicked back its chairs,” as Asahi Shimbun itself wrote, and refused to continue the talks.
To irritated Japanese readers, Asahi preached in an editorial that “the abduction suspicions are nothing but an obstacle to Japan-North Korea normalization,” telling them not to harbor unnecessary suspicions.
Matsui Yayori, formerly of Asahi, also set up the “Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal” and clamored that Japanese people ought to think seriously not about the abduction issue, which was still only a suspicion, but about the comfort women issue that was right there before them.
One of the political operators who has repeatedly made exactly the same statements as Matsui is Kiyomi Tsujimoto.
It was later revealed that the Korean who supported that tribunal was a North Korean agent.
After ten years of this substitution of “comfort women instead of abductions,” Kim Jong-il simply admitted the abductions.
The Japanese unquestionably missed the moment to become truly enraged.

The third-generation ruler, Kim Jong-un, killed his uncle and his brother, and then said, “I will turn both Tokyo and New York into seas of fire,” while carrying out nuclear tests and firing off ICBMs one after another.
When the Japanese at last began seriously thinking about national security, Asahi appeared once again.
At that time, those acting together with Asahi Shimbun were Kiyomi Tsujimoto and Mizuho Fukushima. Anyone with true discernment will surely be further convinced by this historic essay of Masayuki Takayama as to what sort of people they are.
“Mrs. Akie gave a speech at a school in Mizuike and so the Finance Ministry gave it a discount.”
“A friend of the Prime Minister created a veterinary school that had been regulated for half a century.”
This newspaper had told us not to believe the abduction suspicions, despite the abundance of evidence.
But with Moritomo and Kake, Asahi changed its tune and said that although there was absolutely no evidence, suspicion alone was enough.
Foolish television and the Diet made a racket over Moritomo and Kake for a year and a half, neglecting the nation’s security.
Thus, “serious Japanese,” the very thing North Korea feared, faded away.

Why does Asahi always move in ways convenient for North Korea?
At the level of Moritomo and Kake, there is more than enough suspicion that Asahi, for North Korea’s sake, sent Koreans in Japan back there and obstructed the investigation into the abduction of Japanese citizens.
Come to think of it, in the same year as the Korean airliner bombing, the Asahi Hanshin bureau was attacked on Constitution Day.
Since then, Asahi has likened itself to a martyr that shed blood for defending the Constitution and has scolded any move toward constitutional revision.
But if one considers the relationship between the two, does that incident not begin to look like North Korea’s act of repayment to Asahi Shimbun?
The fact that there are still people subscribing to such a newspaper must be one of the wonders of the world.