Published on August 29, 2019.
This article continues an essay by Lee Woo-youn published in the monthly magazine Hanada.
It discusses the significance of Japan, which had long remained silent in the face of South Korea’s unreasonable demands, shifting under the Abe administration to a firm and active stance.
It also introduces the growing number of people in South Korea who believe that anti-Japanism does not serve the national interest, the strong response to the book Anti-Japanese Tribalism, and the incident in which Lee Woo-youn was attacked after stating historical facts at the United Nations.

August 29, 2019.
Until now, in response to South Korea’s repeated denunciations of Japan and unreasonable demands, Japan kept retreating and remained silent.
Because Japan continued to take an attitude that was far too passive and negative, the problem has grown this large.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
A movement opposing anti-Japanism.
Until now, in response to South Korea’s repeated denunciations of Japan and unreasonable demands, Japan kept retreating and remained silent.
Because Japan continued to take an attitude that was far too passive and negative, the problem has grown this large.
It was only under the Abe administration that Japan shifted to an active stance.
This is extremely important.
On historical issues as well, the cause of the problem becoming larger lay not only in the irresponsible words and actions of South Korean intellectuals who exaggerate and distort history, but also, as is well known, in the distorted historical views of Japan’s “conscientious intellectuals.”
In both the so-called wartime labor issue and the comfort women issue, they publicized things that were not historical facts and gave the peoples of both South Korea and Japan great misunderstandings.
Against such movements too, the Abe administration has maintained a resolute response.
On the so-called wartime labor issue, it strongly demands that the Moon administration fulfill the Korea-Japan Claims Agreement, and that is only natural.
When I think of long-term Korea-Japan relations, I think it was rather good that the Japanese side shifted to an active stance at an early stage.
If Japan had yielded to President Moon’s unreasonable demands as before, sound Korea-Japan relations could never be built, no matter how much time passed.
In that respect, I am optimistic about future Korea-Japan relations.
In fact, even within South Korea now, there is definitely an increasing number of ordinary citizens and politicians who think that “anti-Japanism does not serve South Korea’s national interest.”
For example, lawmakers such as Chung Yu-seop of the conservative Liberty Korea Party and its leader Na Kyung-won have begun to question the Moon administration’s anti-Japanism.
In September of last year, I launched the “Association Opposing the Installation of Statues of Comfort Women and Labor-Mobilized Workers,” and in October, the “Association Opposing Anti-Japanese Nationalism”; the membership of the “Association Opposing Anti-Japanese Nationalism” has already exceeded one thousand.
When I ask members, they say that if they have been to Japan, or have Japanese acquaintances and continue exchanges with them, “it is completely different from what we were taught in South Korean textbooks.”
The office is attacked.
At the Naksungdae Institute of Economic Research, where I work, six researchers including Director Lee Young-hoon and myself co-authored Anti-Japanese Tribalism, which was released in South Korea in July, and its circulation has already surpassed thirty thousand copies.
This would have been unthinkable before.
The “anti-Japanese tribalism” discussed in this book refers to a shamanistic worldview, now common among today’s South Koreans regarding the history of Japan’s rule over Korea, built up from lies without any factual basis.
We planned this book in order to expose to the people the entire process of the origin, formation, spread, and rampage of anti-Japanese tribalism, and to appeal about its danger.
The fact that the book has sold this much is, I think, proof that there are South Koreans who feel that “anti-Japanism is wrong” to that extent, and who want to “study” and “teach other people as well.”
It is now the summer vacation season, and at Kyobo Book Centre, the largest bookstore in Seoul, the first to third places in the sales ranking are travel-related books, but this book is in fourth place.
It is extremely rare for a book in the sociology genre to sell this well in South Korea.
Seventeen years ago, the writer Kim Wan-seop wrote A Defense for Pro-Japanese Collaborators, and I hear it became a topic of discussion in Japan as well, but in South Korea it was treated as a harmful book, wrapped in plastic so that people could not read it standing in the store, and placed inconspicuously in a corner of bookstores.
Compared with that time, South Korea is clearly changing.
Of course, many criticisms of this book have come from scholars, specialists, and readers, but there is not a single specific criticism or rebuttal saying, “This part stated by Lee Woo-youn is wrong in this way.”
All of it consists of abusive words such as “That man is pro-Japanese,” “traitor,” and “native Japanese collaborator.”
When I stated historical facts at a symposium held on July 2 at the United Nations Office at Geneva, saying, “Most Korean workers went to Japan to work of their own will” and “there was no ethnic discrimination in wages,” after returning home I was attacked by two men at my office.
They cursed me, saying, “You traitor bastard,” and spat on me, but that is all they are capable of doing.
This article continues.