This essay examines the deep structure of Korean society through Masayuki Takayama’s account of slavery under the Yi Dynasty, the harsh domination by the yangban class, discrimination against people from Jeolla Province, and the persistence of these patterns into modern times.
It raises facts that, in the author’s view, both the Japanese people and the wider world have long been kept from knowing.

2019-06-09
Most of the Koreans who stow away or travel to Japan are also from Jeolla Province.
They first come to Japan, and if they are lucky, they go on from there to America.
That is because the discrimination is so severe that it makes them want to abandon their own country.

Today, I was reading the following book while carrying it with me on a small trip aboard the Shinkansen.
This chapter contains facts that the Japanese people have not been told, and facts that the world does not know.
They are facts that all Japanese people and the entire world must know.
Masayuki Takayama, the author, clearly proves here as well that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Chapter 8: A Country That Had Slaves (Korea), and a Country That Did Not.
Korea, Which Had a Slave System.
Modern Japanese seem to have forgotten this, but Korea is a “foreign country” that has nothing in common with Japan.
Japanese people today have drawn too close to South Korea, and as a result can no longer even see what ought to be visible.
The “greatest difference” between Japan and Korea is whether or not there was a “slave system.”
Even if we take the Yi Dynasty, at the very top were the yangban, below them the chungin, who were ordinary people, below them the commoners (tenant farmers), and below them the nobi.
Those below the nobi were clearly slaves.
Even the commoners had no human rights.
In a book titled Ugly Koreans (Kobunsha), written by Park Tae-hyuk, the son of a yangban, there are accounts of horrific bullying inflicted on slaves and tenant farmers, such as yangban beating them down and breaking their legs for no more reason than what they considered an insolent attitude, leaving them crippled for life.
Looking at the population ratio under this status system, the yangban and chungin, corresponding to warriors and townsmen, made up about 60%.
The commoners and nobi below them made up about 40%.
The proportion of the lower classes was extremely high.
Even in present-day North Korea under the Kim Jong Il regime, where many citizens are said to be starving, if one looks at the proportion of the economically impoverished, it is again “40%.”
In other words, even after changing clothes into those of a socialist state, the substance, including the status system, remained just as it was in the Yi Dynasty.
In addition to status discrimination, there is also regional discrimination.
When one goes to Los Angeles, there are many Koreans there, and Koreatown has been formed.
When you ask them where they are from, they all answer in one voice, “Seoul.”
That is a lie, and most of them are actually from somewhere around Jeolla Province.
That is because people from Jeolla Province are discriminated against in their home country because of where they come from, and cannot rise in society.
So they falsely claim to be “from Seoul.”
Most of the Koreans who stow away or travel to Japan are also from Jeolla Province.
They first come to Japan, and if they are lucky, they go on from there to America.
That is because the discrimination is so severe that it makes them want to abandon their own country.
In Korean history, a “slave system” existed as a normal condition, and in addition to that there were various forms of “discrimination.”
South Korea imitated China and built an Independence Hall of Korea, and when one goes there, scenes are reproduced showing Koreans being tortured by Japanese.
For example, a torture called “bouda” involved tying the feet, inserting a stick between the legs, and twisting it.
In that way, the legs would be broken.
A bamboo whip is also displayed there.
There is an explanatory note saying, “This was done by the cruel Japanese,” but Japanese people have never even seen such torture instruments.
And for some reason, the very same things are also preserved in the Yangban Memorial Hall as “tools used by yangban to punish tenant farmers.”
Even without reading Ugly Koreans, one can understand very well that the yangban carried out such bullying.
To be continued.