Published on August 3, 2019. This essay introduces Nishioka Tsutomu’s monthly column on the Korean Peninsula in WiLL magazine and discusses Professor Lee Young-hoon’s book Anti-Japanese Tribalism, criticizing what it describes as the structure of falsehoods in Korean historiography, university education, wartime labor judgments, and the comfort women issue.

2019-08-03
On that basis, he makes the following self-criticism, as if shaving his own bones, saying that Korean historiography is a hotbed of lies, and that because Koreans received such an education, they came to tell nothing but lies.
The following is from “Monthly Report on the Korean Peninsula,” serialized in the monthly magazine WiLL, released on the 26th, by Nishioka Tsutomu, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Korean Peninsula.
The title of this month’s issue is “Why Are Koreans Liars?”
It is an essay that must be read not only by the Japanese people but also by people all over the world.
The other day, in an election-night vote-counting program, Hashimoto Toru, who is also a lawyer and had belonged to the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, a den of anti-Japanese leftists, loudly and outrageously harangued his views on Japan-Korea relations, and I harshly criticized him as being beneath toilet paper, while at the same time becoming convinced that, as he is now, he is not a vessel fit to shoulder national politics; however, it is precisely a person like him who must read this essay with eyes wide open.
Foreword omitted.
Korean universities are factories producing lies.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, conscientious scholars are waging a fierce battle in the arena of speech.
I am writing this manuscript now in Seoul, South Korea.
That is because Professor Lee Young-hoon and others, who are representative conscientious scholars directly criticizing South Korea’s anti-Japanese stance, introduced in the previous issue, published a book that clearly summarizes their arguments, The Root of the Republic of Korea’s Crisis: Anti-Japanese Tribalism, and its publication event was held on July 17.
In that book, Professor Lee explained as follows why he uses the unfamiliar term “anti-Japanese tribalism” instead of the term “anti-Japanese nationalism.”
“Korean nationalism is distinguished from the nationalism that arose in the West.
In Korean nationalism, there is no category of the free and independent individual.
The Korean nation is, in itself, one group, one authority, and one status.
Therefore, rather, the word tribe is correct.”
On that basis, he makes the following self-criticism, as if shaving his own bones, saying that Korean historiography is a hotbed of lies, and that because Koreans received such an education, they came to tell nothing but lies.
“The fact that the people of this country have made lies part of everyday life, and that the politicians of this country use lies as a means of political strife, is something for which this country’s lying scholarship bears the greatest responsibility.
As I see it, this country’s historiography and sociology are hotbeds of lies.
This country’s universities are factories producing lies.
I can say with confidence that it would not be a great mistake to put it that way.
It has been roughly since the 1960s, so already sixty years have passed in such a manner.
That is why, entering the 2000s, all the people and all the politicians came to tell lies calmly and without hesitation.”
He then lists the lies in Korean historiography, his own field of specialization.
“If one were to list what kinds of lies Korean historiography has told, from ancient history to modern history, there would be no end to them.
The lies run rampant mainly in relation to the history of Japan’s rule over this land in the twentieth century.
I will list only a few that I refuted in this book.
The textbook description that the Government-General seized 40 percent of all land nationwide by turning it into state-owned land through the land survey project was a completely nonsensical fiction.
The textbook claim that rice from colonial Korea was shipped out to Japan was the product of ignorance.
The claim that Imperial Japan mobilized Koreans as laborers during the wartime period and cruelly exploited them as slaves was a malicious fabrication.
The march of lies reached its climax with the issue of the Japanese military comfort women.
The common belief that military police and police abducted virgins on the roadside or took women from washing places and dragged them to comfort stations was a blatant lie for which not even a single case has been found.”
Having criticized historiography to this extent, he then thoroughly criticizes the Supreme Court’s wartime laborer compensation judgment of last October, saying that those lies had even spread to the courts.
“Sixty years have already passed since lying scholarship wrote a false history and taught it to the younger generations.
The generation that grew up receiving that education has finally become Supreme Court justices, so it is not all that strange that this country’s judiciary conducts false trials.”
The negligence of the Supreme Court justices.
It is a little long, but since it concerns the cause of the current deterioration in Japan-Korea relations, I would like to introduce the main part of Professor Lee’s criticism of the judgment.
“Let us talk about the ruling handed down at the end of October 2018, in which the Supreme Court ordered Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal, which had succeeded the company, to pay 100 million won each to four people who had worked at Japan Iron & Steel before liberation from Japanese rule.
The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit almost twenty years ago, and I believe they were originally people who went to Japan and pursued litigation there.
Despite repeated defeats, the persistence with which they finally drew out a victory is itself something remarkable.
What is the substance of that persistence?
In any case, the Supreme Court, on the premise that Japan’s rule over Korea was illegal, judged that Koreans were mobilized all the way to Japan for a war of aggression, were not properly paid monthly wages, and were cruelly exploited as slaves.
The Supreme Court’s written judgment begins with a description of the ‘basic facts’ of the relevant case.
My impression after reading that part was, in one word, ‘This is a lie.’
I do not intend to argue over the legal reasoning of the written judgment.
I am not a jurist.
There is only one focus of my judgment.
Those ‘basic facts’ are not facts; no, there is a strong possibility that they are lies.
The Supreme Court did not verify whether the plaintiffs’ claims were facts.
I cannot find any trace of such verification in the written judgment.
I would like to ask the noble Supreme Court justices of our country.
‘Can a trial that does not verify claims that may be lies truly be valid?’
Of the four plaintiffs, two responded to recruitment in September 1943 and worked as trainee workers at the company’s Osaka steel works.
Japan Iron & Steel supposedly forced them to save most of their monthly wages and had the dormitory superintendent keep their passbooks and seals, but that superintendent never returned the money to them.
That is the basic content of the damage the plaintiffs claim to have suffered.
This fact is something well known to me as a historian.
I have heard many similar cases from many people.
As the written judgment suggests, there is a strong possibility that the two plaintiffs were minors at the time.
There is a strong possibility that the superintendent was not an employee of Japan Iron & Steel, but a Korean who was the master of a labor camp or dormitory where laborers lodged as a group.
They were generally Koreans.
Only in that way could communication and control be possible.
Later, the superintendent returned to Wonsan together with the plaintiffs.
This fact supports the following inference.
I think there is a possibility that the superintendent was the guardian or protector of the plaintiffs, accompanying them from the time of departure.
My argument is as follows.
The claim that Japan Iron & Steel did not pay wages to the plaintiffs does not hold.
The written judgment itself, which speaks of forced savings and so on, proves that point.
If the wages were not transmitted to the plaintiffs, then the superintendent was the culprit.
Therefore, whether the superintendent really did such a thing cannot be known unless the superintendent is interrogated.
The superintendent may have remitted the monthly wages to the plaintiffs’ families on behalf of the plaintiffs, who were minors.
In short, the relevant case is a civil case between the plaintiffs and the superintendent.
The above is my opinion after reading the written judgment.
However, did the Supreme Court summon and investigate the superintendent?
The superintendent must have died long ago.
If so, can the lawsuit stand?
Let me make my argument clear.
I am not denying the plaintiffs’ claims; rather, I am saying that it cannot be confirmed whether they are true or not.
That is the truth.
Even though only this much is known as fact, the Korean Supreme Court pursued the responsibility of Japan Iron & Steel.
The Supreme Court justices are not historians.
They are merely jurists who know nothing about the actual conditions of the wartime period at that time.
If so, should they not have called relevant specialists and heard reference testimony?
However, they were so ignorant of the reality of that time that they did not even feel the need to do so.
They did not doubt the plaintiffs’ claims, which had a strong possibility of being lies.
That too is because they had received an education of lies from childhood.”
I am deeply moved by Professor Lee’s conscience and courage in making, under his real name, such calm and fact-based criticism of an anti-Japanese judgment in the arena of public discourse.
Anti-Japanese Tribalism, written by Professor Lee and others with the desperate feeling that their country would perish unless they fought lies, is said to have sold out 18,000 copies in ten days after release, with an additional 10,000 copies being printed.
Professor Lee revealed his tragic motivation for writing the book Anti-Japanese Tribalism as follows.
“The reason all kinds of lies are created and spread is anti-Japanese tribalism.
If this is left as it is, the advancement of this country will be impossible.
Far from advancing, it will regress.
A culture, politics, scholarship, and courts of lies will lead this country to ruin.
This book is my charge, with everything I have, against anti-Japanese tribalism and that enormous camp of cultural power.”
I would like to continue watching whether the battle of Professor Lee and others in this arena of speech will change Korean society.
This article continues.