Published on January 5, 2020. Continuing Ruriko Kubota’s essay “The Gnashing of Teeth by Left-Wing Media” in the monthly magazine Sound Argument, this article introduces Lee Young-hoon’s press conference remarks. It discusses how freedom of thought after South Korea’s democratization helped expand anti-Japanese sentiment, and how the Japan-Korea left-wing alliance created “historical myths” originating in Japan, including the comfort women issue, the land-plunder theory, and the forced-labor conscription narrative.
2020-01-05
This book also has the meaning of urging Japan’s so-called progressive intellectuals to reflect.
The leftists of Japan and South Korea have formed an alliance.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
The emphases in the text, other than headings, are mine.
Anti-Japanese Sentiment Brought by Freedom of Thought
Since the press conference was hosted by the Japan National Press Club, newspaper company alumni and overseas media also participated.
A question came from a former employee of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
“When I was posted to South Korea in the 1980s, there was no comfort women issue.
After that, the Seoul Olympics were held in 1988, and at the time we expected that if South Korea became richer, it might become a little more generous toward Japan.
However, the bigger South Korea becomes, the stronger its anti-Japanese sentiment becomes.
Why do you think this is?”
Lee’s answer concerned another aspect of South Korea’s democratization in the 1980s.
“From the 1950s to the 1980s, South Korea achieved rapid growth.
From the 1950s to 1963, it achieved 10 percent growth every year.
Under Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan, Japan-Korea cooperation proceeded well, but South Korea’s democratization in 1988 brought freedom of thought.
Before that in South Korea, it was impossible even to refer to Marxism, but from 1988 that was permitted.
Then the political forces that had been suppressed burst out all at once.
Among them were many who opposed the founding of the Republic of Korea.
They were people who had believed that pro-Japanese collaborators created the Republic of Korea.
The political influence of such opposition forces gradually increased, and in 1993 the Kim Young-sam era began.
After that, the feelings of anti-Japan tribalism that I wrote about in this book came to dominate South Korea.”
Another former newspaper employee asked the following.
“I had never read a book that shocked me so deeply.
What is the reaction in South Korea?
What are ordinary people, scholars, and politicians saying?”
Lee answered.
“The reactions of Korean readers are divided into two extremes.
You can see both favorable feelings and disgust.
Readers are writing reviews on the websites of major bookstores.
Opinions at both extremes are clashing.
Strong criticism has been raised by democratization forces and NGOs, but there has not yet been any reaction from South Korean universities or historical associations.”
Finally, a reporter from the South Korean media outlet JoongAng Ilbo asked.
“What do you think is the reason this book is selling so well in Japan?
It has certainly received a large response in Japan, but what do you think of the criticism that this book is cooperating with, or lending a hand to, Japan’s distorted historical perception?”
Lee answered with a grave expression.
“I believe that Japan-Korea relations are not only a South Korean issue, but an East Asian issue that includes Japan.
I think it is selling in Japan because Japanese readers are interested in freedom and democracy in Asia.
Also, you spoke of historical distortion, but when the history of a closed world is brought outside, the people of that closed world sometimes see it as having been distorted from outside.
You also spoke of responsibility for history, but free citizens of South Korea must create an awareness through which they can sympathize with free citizens of Japan.”
A Sense of Crisis over Japan-Korea Left-Wing Cooperation
In interviews up to now, Lee Young-hoon has expressed a sense of crisis over the Japan-Korea cooperation of left-wing media and NGOs.
In the speech he gave at the press conference as well, he deliberately mentioned Seiji Yoshida, who had claimed to be a witness to forced transport in the comfort women issue, and Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a researcher of the sex-slave theory.
“This book also has the meaning of urging Japan’s so-called progressive intellectuals to reflect.
The leftists of Japan and South Korea have formed an alliance.
Starting with the comfort women issue, the land-plunder theory and forced labor by conscripted workers were also historical myths created from Japan.
And in the end, they had no role other than worsening Japan-Korea relations,” he also said.
At present, no concentrated attack on Lee has occurred in South Korea.
The only such incident was that one of the writing members, Lee Woo-yeon, was attacked by a thug shortly after the book’s release.
Counterarguments in the media have been published sporadically by the left-wing newspaper Hankyoreh.
In an editorial titled “The Noise and Concern Caused by Anti-Japan Tribalism,” it wrote that “the book Anti-Japan Tribalism is causing serious noise.
Not only does it deny the coercive nature of the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ and conscription, which are common sense for all citizens, it also includes provocative and absurd content claiming that there is no evidence that Dokdo is territory of the Republic of Korea.
…At a time when an ‘economic war’ between South Korea and Japan is unfolding, this absurd news leaves us speechless.
We cannot help but be concerned not only about the authors’ anti-historical and irrational behavior, but also about certain regressive currents that cannot reflect on or recognize the history of humiliation,” and so on.
After that, Hankyoreh also carried a contribution by an executive of the civic group “Research Association on Japanese Imperial Forced Mobilization and Peace,” which claims that “forced mobilization during the Japanese imperial period totaled 7.8 million people,” and articles presenting claims by the anti-Japanese historical-view group “Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities,” such as that “the property of Japan’s Government-General of Korea was property plundered from the Korean Empire.”
There is also a tendency to view this book politically and compare it to Japan’s “Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform.”
There are also movements to politicize it, with voices from South Korean historians saying things such as, “The writing group behind Anti-Japan Tribalism has political intentions, the content beautifies pro-Japanese collaboration and dictatorship, and their intention is, like Japan’s far-right force the ‘Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform,’ to expand their popular influence, rally the conservative camp, and thereby strengthen their own position.”
The writing group, on the contrary, hopes to continue the “Anti-Japan Tribalism debate” within South Korea.
In South Korea up to now, in March 2005, Han Sung-joo, professor emeritus at Korea University, published an essay in the monthly magazine Sound Argument titled “The Folly of Condemning Pro-Japanese Collaborators Rooted in Communism and Left-Wing Thought—Reevaluate the Japan-Korea Annexation,” which took up positive aspects of Japanese rule, causing a major uproar in South Korea, after which he was denounced and forced out of the university.
After that as well, social sanctions and bashing continued through the labeling of people as “pro-Japanese,” but this time the situation seems somewhat different.
Anti-Japan Tribalism began three years ago when Lee Young-hoon gave lectures on modern and contemporary history on South Korea’s conservative internet television channel Pen & Mic.
In the final lecture, he took up “the comfort women,” began with government courtesans of the seventeenth-century Joseon dynasty, analyzed Japanese military comfort women incorporated into Japan’s licensed prostitution system, and completely denied the “comfort women sex-slave theory.”
Normally, he would immediately have been abused as a “traitor to the nation,” but because the medium was conservative internet media, it did not become a major uproar.
Anti-Japan Tribalism expanded those lectures and condensed into a book forty-five lectures on South Korean modern and contemporary history, conducted together with experts in various fields, and this argument based on empirical evidence is steadily spreading throughout South Korea.
One part of the target of the Lee Young-hoon group, which says it will continue to “launch debate in South Korea,” is also the existence of the Japan-Korea allied left wing that shares the anti-Japanese historical view.