Published on February 4, 2020.
This article discusses Kato Tatsuya’s Sankei Shimbun column on WWUK, a pro-Japan YouTuber born in Korea, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris, Korea’s speech environment, anti-Japanese sentiment, historical interpretation issues, and the question of whether Korea will remain in the Japan-U.S. camp or shift toward the China-North Korea camp.

2020-02-04
After hearing the admonitions of Mr. Harris and Mr. WWUK, will Korea remain on the Japan-U.S. team, or will it transfer to the China-North Korea team?
In the end, it can only be a choice made by the Korean people themselves.
The following is from Kato Tatsuya’s serial column, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “The ‘Love for Korea’ of Harry and WWUK.”
Good grief.
After all, in that country, even living according to one’s own way of life is a matter of life and death.
Recently, I have once again felt this very strongly.
Last month, I interviewed a young YouTuber who had become a breakout figure on the video-posting site YouTube.
His name is written WWUK and read as Walk.
He was born in Seoul, but graduated from high school and a vocational school in Japan.
He is now applying for naturalization in Japan.
He says that when he studied in Australia from his second year of junior high school, he made Japanese friends, and through drama DVDs he came to admire life in Japan.
For the details of his remarks, please watch the Sankei Shimbun YouTube channel, but he is a young man who casually says of Japan that he likes its considerate quality of “even between close friends, courtesy is necessary,” using a proverb that is rarely heard even among Japanese people these days.
Today he has become known as a “pro-Japan YouTuber” who deals with current affairs.
The trigger was the incident in December of the year before last in which a Korean naval vessel directed fire-control radar at a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force patrol aircraft, because the Korean government’s “completely visible lie” was so terrible.
Since then, he has tried to make programs based on historical facts without being bound by the prevailing views in Korea.
However, under the Moon Jae-in administration, amid concerns that a bill called the “Historical Distortion Prohibition Act,” which would make historical interpretations other than those officially approved by the government illegal, may be enacted, he has come to feel that distributing videos involves risk.
In fact, he has received murder threats and has consulted the police, but out of love for his homeland, Mr. WWUK also worries about Korea’s future.
Even so, from my own experience, Korea’s space for speech is narrow compared with Japan’s.
Recently, some media outlets and commentators have claimed as if Japan were a country that suppresses speech, but I can state clearly that this is an exaggeration.
Seen fairly, Japan is on a completely different level from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China.
North Korea is not even worth discussing, and my own feeling is that Japan’s speech space cannot even be compared with Korea’s, where prosecutions of reporters over reporting are repeatedly launched.
Incidentally, diplomats, who are sometimes called “fighters with words,” also risk their lives in Korea in the case of Japan and the United States.
Within the past ten years, the ambassadors of both countries have had their lives endangered by attacks with stones or knives.
Harry Harris, the current U.S. ambassador to South Korea, whose mother was Japanese, has been criticized by politicians, the internet, and the media on the grounds that his mustache evokes the “Governor-General of Korea” during the period of Japanese rule.
His personal security must be made strict.
Mr. Harris himself has complained of racism, saying that he is being criticized by the local media because of his racial background as a person of Japanese descent.
Yet while he takes a stern attitude toward Korea, he also stands close to it, and in fact he has many supporters.
Recently, he tweeted in Hangul to show concern for people struggling because of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus:
“Our embassy is closely monitoring the situation and is in close contact with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and with our colleagues in China.
Please take care of your health.”
Favorable replies to this followed one after another.
Among them, perhaps because they find their own government unreliable, there was even an ardent love call:
“A trivial number of Juche ideologues dislike the United States and the ambassador, but the rest of the whole people trust the United States and the ambassador.
Please protect all of us to the end.
Respected Ambassador, please stay well.”
Winning the hearts of the people of the country to which one is posted is also an important task for a diplomat.
Professional consciousness may be part of what drives him, but behind Mr. Harris’s words and actions in addressing the Korean people despite suffering discrimination, there seems to be a kind of affection that hopes Korea will become a normal country.
After hearing the admonitions of Mr. Harris and Mr. WWUK, both filled with “love for Korea,” will Korea remain on the Japan-U.S. team, or will it transfer to the China-North Korea team?
In the end, it can only be a choice made by the Korean people themselves.