Written on June 28, 2019.
This essay argues that Japanese rule in Korea was fundamentally different from Western-style colonialism, while illustrating the actual nature of European colonial rule in Asia at the start of the twentieth century.
By citing examples from French Indochina, India, the Dutch East Indies, and Burma, and highlighting such features of Western rule as poll taxes, salt taxes, opium monopolies, low literacy rates, and ruthless repression, the essay sharply criticizes the Asahi Shimbun’s historical portrayal through a contrast with railway construction, electrification, school building, and rising literacy in Korea.

2019-06-28
Japan did not impose a poll tax or a salt tax on Korea.
It kept income tax as low as one-seventh of that in the Japanese mainland.
Instead of prisons, it laid railways, brought in electricity, built schools, and literacy exceeded 90 percent.

Chapter 5. Burma and Pearl Harbor.
The black trap set by white men.
Send every last one of them to the gallows.
By the time the twentieth century began, Asia, apart from Japan, Thailand, and China, had been divided up as colonies of the great powers.　
According to the Asahi Shimbun, Japan too turned Taiwan and Korea into “colonies.”　
Certainly, the Cairo Declaration of the last war contains the phrase “the enslaved people of Korea,” but this is overdone.
A colony took the form of imposing poll taxes, liquor taxes, and salt taxes, suppressing literacy, and crushing resistance to the suzerain power thoroughly.
Put simply, a colony meant turning an entire country into one vast slave plantation.　
For example, in French Indochina, in addition to the above taxes, marriage, funerals, and moving house were also taxed, and opium, which was prohibited by law in France itself, was made into a state monopoly (régie opium) and allotted to every village.　
If it was for making money, they would even become drug dealers.
That was the French view of colonialism.　
The literacy rate was just over 1 percent.
They did not build schools, but they built prisons in every town.
The famous prison island Poulo Condore was already built in the late nineteenth century, soon after colonization.
This prison island remained in active use until the time of the Vietnam War and was commonly called the “Tiger Cage.”　
Japan did not impose a poll tax or a salt tax on Korea.
It kept income tax as low as one-seventh of that in the Japanese mainland.
Instead of prisons, it laid railways, brought in electricity, built schools, and literacy exceeded 90 percent.　
Looking back now, Japan too did some pointless things, but the Asahi Shimbun depicts this rule over Korea as though it were the kind of colony spoken of in the West, while conversely writing as if French Indochina had been heaven.
Its unwavering determination that truth be damned remains firm, but if that is the case, it had better stop calling itself a newspaper.　
In such Western colonies, at the beginning of the 1930s, resistance against the suzerain powers broke out all at once.　
In India, Gandhi carried out that “Salt March.”
The line of Indians who took part stretched for as much as 50 kilometers.
It was a protest against the salt tax, the very symbol of colonial taxation, and the British government imprisoned Gandhi and outlawed the Indian National Congress that supported him.　
In French Indochina, six hundred men led by Nguyễn Thái Học of the Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng attacked the French military base at Yên Bái and killed six white soldiers.
The French side deployed Senegalese troops, said to be the best in the world at marksmanship, killed people one after another, and finally executed Thái Học and the remaining thirteen men by guillotine.　
The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng was a nationalist organization led by Phan Bội Châu, who had learned from Japan, and the French government suppressed it as a terrorist group.　
In the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch naval destroyer “De Zeven Provinciën” was seized by people resisting colonial rule.　
And in Burma, the Saya San Rebellion broke out.
To be continued.