Originally published on January 15, 2020.
This is a reconstructed version of a chapter originally published on January 12, 2019, criticizing the Seoul bureau chief who appeared on NHK’s “watch9” for categorically stating that “Japan colonized Korea.”
It questions the historical view that equates Japan’s rule of the Korean Peninsula with Western-style colonialism and, while referring to modernization projects such as railways, schools, ports, dams, and Keijo Imperial University, argues that NHK must fulfill its responsibility to explain itself to the Japanese people.
2020-01-15
If he cannot explain it, he must immediately resign as an NHK employee (in practical terms, a national public servant) and apologize to Japan and the Japanese people.
Takano, the head of NHK’s Seoul bureau, made the categorical comment, “Japan colonized Korea…”
A chapter I published on 2019-01-12 under the title, “This Is the Reality of NHK, Japan’s State Broadcaster,” is now overwhelmingly No. 1 in goo’s real-time Top 10.
Perhaps people who were watching watch9 a short while ago remembered it and searched for it again.
A chapter I published on 2018-11-21 under the title, “A short while ago, Takano, the head of NHK’s Seoul bureau, categorically commented, ‘Japan colonized Korea…’” is now No. 1 in searches on Ameba, with figures overwhelmingly higher than usual.
It is probably because the true nature of the country called South Korea has begun to be exposed in broad daylight.
I have added a little to this chapter and reorganized the paragraphs and so forth.
Among the people who make their living in the media, the easiest way to distinguish those who are under the influence of operations by China or the Korean Peninsula (such as money traps or honey traps) is to see whether the expressions on their faces shown on television are all abnormal… and, with those abnormal expressions, they invariably say exactly what Chinese or Korean Peninsula propaganda says.
Just now, while watching NHK’s watch9, a man with the title of Seoul bureau correspondent chief appeared.
This man, as though it were an established fact, categorically stated that Japan had colonized Korea.
First, to put it simply, did Japanese people colonize Korea?
On the contrary, other than the fact that millions of people from the Korean Peninsula migrated to and settled in Japan, where is there any such fact?
The concept of a colony is that powerful Western countries made poor regions throughout the world into colonies, exploited the products of those regions, and enriched their own countries.
What products of the Korean Peninsula did Japan supposedly exploit in order to become wealthy?
The fact is completely the opposite: the Korean Peninsula had a king, and the yangban had thoroughly ravaged the country (to borrow the words of Professor Hiroshi Furuta, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Korean Peninsula, it was an ancient despotic state), and at last the state treasury had become empty.
At that time, the Korean Peninsula had one of the world’s worst systems of status discrimination, divided into an unbelievable number of categories… everyone other than the king and the yangban was a discriminated class.
Even scholars were members of a discriminated class.
Perhaps for that reason as well, it was one of the poorest countries in the world.
This was also the period when Russia had begun trying to turn the Korean Peninsula into a dependency.
China, its suzerain state for what could be called almost all of recorded history, had never wanted to acquire the Korean Peninsula… because, as many experts on the Korean Peninsula have said, its people brought nothing but trouble.
The United States withdrew all of its consulates and other facilities, saying, “There is no system of government here… this is not a country.”
And then it told Japan:
Japan had no choice but to annex it.
Despite the unmistakable historical fact that Japan did not make it a colony but formed a unified state with it, and that the Korean king at the time was received almost as though he were a member of Japan’s Imperial Family,
Takano, the head of NHK’s Seoul bureau, a short while ago categorically commented, “Japan colonized Korea…”
This is the reality of NHK, Japan’s state broadcaster.
Takano.
Which Western country in the age of colonialism spent more than 25 percent of its own national budget on its colony to build schools throughout the entire territory,
or, for a people living in what was virtually an ancient state, not only introduced compulsory education but also, in 1924 (Taisho 13), before Nagoya University was even founded, established Keijo Imperial University (present-day Seoul National University),
and built railways, ports, dams, and every kind of infrastructure?
Japan, completely unlike those countries, transformed the premodern Korean Peninsula at once into a modern state comparable to Japan itself.
You need to explain properly on watch9 where in the West there ever existed such a colonialist state.
If you cannot explain it, you must immediately resign as an NHK employee (in practical terms, a national public servant) and apologize to Japan and the Japanese people.
Because your words and actions are tantamount to treason against the state and the crime of false accusation.