This piece disputes an NHK Seoul bureau comment that described Japan’s rule over Korea as “colonial,” arguing from definitions of colonialism, the international context at the time, and Japan’s heavy investment in education and infrastructure. It questions the responsibility of a public broadcaster when using decisive historical labels.

2019-01-12
A moment ago, NHK’s Seoul bureau chief, Takano, made a definitive comment: “Japan made it a colony…”.
A chapter I posted on 2018-11-21 under the title “Takano, NHK’s Seoul bureau chief, just declared on air that ‘Japan made it a colony…’” has now risen to No.1 in searches on Ameba, with figures far higher than usual.
Perhaps that is because the posture of the South Korean state is increasingly being exposed in broad daylight.
In this chapter, I have added some notes and reorganized the paragraphs.
Among people who make their living in the media, the simplest way to identify those under the influence of operations linked to China or the Korean Peninsula is to watch whether their facial expressions on screen appear abnormal.
And within that abnormality, they will invariably repeat lines consistent with a particular propaganda narrative.
While watching NHK’s Watch9, a man bearing the title “Seoul correspondent bureau chief” appeared.
He spoke as if it were an established fact, flatly asserting that Japan turned Korea into a colony.
Let me start with a basic question: did Japan “colonize” Korea.
In my understanding, it is a historical fact that people have long migrated from the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese archipelago.
In the modern era as well, there were periods when many people came to Japan.
I worked in real estate, and I have handled transactions in which the buyer was a passport holder whose documents recorded their port of entry.
Colonialism, in the classical sense, is when powerful Western states seize poorer regions as colonies, extract local products, and enrich themselves.
So what products did Japan extract from the Korean Peninsula in order to become wealthy.
In my view, Japan instead poured substantial resources into education, institutions, and infrastructure.
At the time, the Korean Peninsula faced internal structural problems, and its treasury was strained.
This was also the period when Russia began attempting to turn the peninsula into a dependency.
It has also been said, in substance, that the United States withdrew its consular presence on the grounds that “there is no functioning state structure here.”
Within that international environment, my assessment is that an argument formed as a kind of “best available solution” at the time: that annexation by Japan was unavoidable.
It is also a clear fact that Itō Hirobumi, later assassinated by a Korean, opposed annexation to the very end, saying, “What would we gain by annexing such a poor country.”
It is not that Japan “made it a colony,” but that it formed an annexed polity.
It is also a matter of historical record that the Korean king at the time was received in a manner akin to being treated as part of the imperial household.
And yet, NHK’s Seoul bureau chief described this as “making it a colony,” in a definitive tone.
This is the reality of NHK as a state-backed broadcaster.
During the age of colonialism, which Western country invested more than 25% of its own national budget into a colony to build schools across the entire land.
Not only that, Japan established Keijō Imperial University (today’s Seoul National University) in 1924, Taishō 13.
It also developed railways, ports, dams, and every kind of infrastructure.
Japan connected the Korean Peninsula to modern state institutions in a rapid and sweeping way.
If one insists on calling that “colonialism,” then a public broadcaster must explain what is the same as, and what differs from, Western colonialism.
NHK has a responsibility to explain this to viewers.
If it cannot, then it should retract such definitive wording, issue a correction, and apologize.