A front-page scoop by Sankei Shimbun revealed that South Korean organizations conducted coordinated obstruction using fabricated materials during Japan’s World Heritage registration.
The findings validate the anthropologist Tadao Umesao’s conclusions about “bottomless malice” and “plausible lies,” long ignored by readers of Asahi and Nikkei.

2016-04-04
The following article was a scoop published on the front page of yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun.
This is a fact that readers of the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei have not been informed of to this day.
This revelation also fully proves the accuracy of the conclusions reached by Tadao Umesao, the greatest anthropologist and ethnologist produced by Japan,
who lived and conducted fieldwork across nearly every province of China and identified the defining traits of the Sinic sphere as “bottomless malice” and “plausible lies.”
After all, this was an operation carried out jointly by South Korea’s government and private sector.
Alexis Dudden and the Americans who accepted her claims at face value should truly be ashamed.
All emphases in the text, except for the headline and the portions marked with asterisks, are mine.
“South Korea Obstructs with Fabricated Materials.”
“Japanese Photographs Used to Claim ‘Forced Labor.’”
During last summer’s registration of the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution” as a World Cultural Heritage property,
it was newly revealed on the 2nd that South Korean civic groups had produced multiple materials unrelated to the registration itself
and distributed them to selection committee members of relevant countries, carrying out organized obstruction.
By using photographs of injured Japanese workers for emotional manipulation, the reality of government–private sector cooperation in anti-Japanese propaganda behind the scenes of diplomacy was laid bare.
Japanese officials obtained booklets and promotional flyers that South Korea had distributed to all members of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee.
The booklet featured a photograph of a thin, injured worker, accompanied by English slogans reading, “Awaken, UNESCO! Awaken, World! Awaken, Humanity!”
However, Sankei’s investigation revealed that the photograph had been repurposed from one published in September 1926 in the Asahikawa Shimbun in Hokkaido.
The original article reported an abuse-related death at a road construction site in Hokkaido and included testimony from a former reporter who had escaped the abuse while working to repay debts.
There was no mention suggesting the presence of workers from the Korean Peninsula.
Nevertheless, the booklet falsely claimed that the photograph depicted “facilities where labor was forced through abduction”
and warned that World Heritage registration would provoke strong opposition from the Korean public and worsen tensions in East Asia.
This is precisely the kind of language one would expect from so-called Japanese civic groups that have repeatedly tattled to the United Nations behind the backs of the Japanese people,
and from the Asahi Shimbun, which has supported them.
To be continued.