After reading a special issue of Hanada magazine on Korea’s historical narratives and media environment, this essay questions the stance of Japanese correspondents.
It argues that major media outlets may have been aware of conditions in South Korea yet failed to report them critically, raising concerns about journalistic balance and responsibility.

January 18, 2019
It is impossible that correspondents from the Asahi Shimbun and NHK did not know this reality…what kind of people are they!
A friend bought for me at Kinokuniya Umeda the Hanada Selection issue “Korea’s Two Lies: Wartime Labor and Comfort Women,” which had a full-page advertisement in today’s Sankei Shimbun.
Just flipping through it briefly shocked me.
…I had decided long ago never to go to Korea.
As those around me and my readers know, I have never been there and therefore did not know the situation firsthand.
But immediately anger toward Asahi and NHK welled up in me…because they must have known this reality.
The unimaginable awfulness of the Seodaemun Prison History Hall and the Independence Hall…one could say they fully prove my assertion (and that of Tadao Umesao) that Korea is a country of “bottomless malice” and “plausible falsehoods.”
It is truly appalling.
Furthermore, the complete transcripts of “false and absurd Korean news programs” and the ridiculousness of “Korean news programs so laughable.”
There is no way Asahi and NHK correspondents did not know this reality…what on earth are they!
While watching Moon Jae-in’s recent press conference, I wondered why Asahi reporters did not pose tough questions in their usual arrogant manner.
They attack Japan’s own prime minister and government fiercely, yet say nothing to Korea’s president.
Even knowing that this is typical of Asahi, it still felt strange.
The only one who asked a question was Takano, the NHK Seoul bureau chief, whose expression has recently become distorted by what might be called poetic justice.
Even then, he asked in a fawning manner—and in Korean.
Given the situation, it would have been natural to ask in Japanese and have the other side prepare an interpreter.
NHK—or Takano—seems not to understand even such basics.
It is precisely such attitudes that have emboldened Korea, a country of “bottomless malice” and “plausible falsehoods,” to this extent.