This essay argues that what is happening in South Korea today can only be understood by reexamining the modern history of the Korean Peninsula, especially the era of Syngman Rhee.
The author warns that unless Japanese people grasp these underlying realities, they cannot properly understand the political and historical behavior of Korea, and that such ignorance is deeply dangerous for Japan.
The article introduced here portrays the founding years of South Korea as an age marked by violence and dictatorship, citing the Jeju uprising and massacre, the attempted invasion of Tsushima, the seizure of Takeshima, the killing of Japanese fishermen, and, after the outbreak of the Korean War, the mass execution of those connected to the National Bodo League.
It further argues that modern South Korean historical education has concealed these dark domestic realities while depicting Japan unilaterally as evil, and that this distortion lies at the core of anti-Japan propaganda.
To understand South Korea, the essay insists, one must first see through the violence and falsehood embedded in its modern historical foundations.

2019-03-19
When the Korean War broke out, Syngman Rhee intensified his paranoia toward internal enemies and carried out mass executions of those who had been registered in the National Bodo League, an organization created to “re-educate” communists and their families.

A chapter I published on 2018-12-05 under the title, What Is Happening in South Korea Now Can Only Be Understood Once One Knows These Facts, has entered Ameba’s official hashtag ranking at No. 69 under “Studying in America.”
Astonished and appalled by the words and actions of President Lee Myung-bak in his final period in office, I began wondering what kind of country South Korea really is, and searched online about South Korea and the Korean Peninsula.
In one hour, I came to understand the reality of the Korean Peninsula.
For the first time, I learned the true condition of South Korea, something I had never understood at all as a reader of The Asahi Shimbun and as one educated in the postwar system.
As for North Korea, one need not even search to know that it is a country of indescribable horror.
Just now, I found yet another article that embodies the essence of the internet, the greatest library in human history.
What is happening in South Korea now can only be understood once one knows these facts.
In other words, unless one knows these facts, one cannot understand the Koreans.
And for the Japanese, that is an extremely dangerous thing.
Just as I personally encountered an evil so severe that it led me to a grave illness that nearly cost me my life, Japan too had in fact continued to encounter this evil all along.
It had continued to be exposed to it.
Not only against Japan, but using the United States and the United Nations as their main battlegrounds, they have long continued to spread their evil.
The truth revealed by this laborious work is the true nature of anti-Japan propaganda.
Against Japan, a nation in which, by God’s providence, the turntable of civilization is turning, and which must lead the world alongside the United States.
The world has continued for seventy postwar years to overlook the fact that countries such as the Korean Peninsula and China, nations of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” have kept carrying out a kind of Nazism under the name of anti-Japan education.
The time when people should realize that God’s anger at this has kept the world unstable and full of endless conflict had already come long ago.
That I.
Reluctantly.
Appeared in this way carrying the banner of The Turntable of Civilization was, for Japan and for the world, in fact something of far greater importance than either I or my readers could have imagined.
What follows is the article I discovered.
It was after reading South Korean history textbooks.
The Japanese were depicted as cruel and merciless “devils.”
Modern Japan was portrayed as having done nothing to Korea except “massacre and plunder.”
◆Why Did South Korea Rewrite History? — Considering the Motives and Backgrounds (Second Half), by Yamada Takaaki.
The Syngman Rhee era, which marked the true beginning of South Korea’s misfortune.
Now then, let us return to the main subject.
With Japan’s defeat, the governing authority over Korea was transferred from the Government-General to the United States.
At first, various factions were in turmoil over state-building, and the Soviet Union quickly set up its puppet.
Neither the Provisional Government nor the independence army itself was recognized, but Syngman Rhee personally, having studied in the United States and lobbied there, was ultimately elevated as the head of an anti-communist puppet regime.
However, the selfish demand that “Korea should be added to the Allied powers” was rejected.
That was because it was thought that people who had neither fought nor shed blood had no right to thrust themselves forward.
Therefore, for Koreans to describe themselves as a “victorious people” or as “an Allied people” is simply contrary to fact.
One cannot help but feel dismay that this man came to wield dictatorial power as the first president.
The period from Rhee’s return to Korea until his exile was a “dark age,” and it is abnormal that modern South Koreans lack any memory of it.
In many senses, this Syngman Rhee was the root of all evils, and his era itself was exactly what South Korean history education depicts as “Japanese imperialism.”
The first evil deed committed by Syngman Rhee was the “Jeju Island Incident,” which, in short, was the mass slaughter of islanders who were communists or suspected of being communists.
As a result, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and tens of thousands more fled to Japan and remained there.
The massacres continued afterward as well, and the island’s population declined sharply.
Smaller in scale, similar massacres were also carried out in other areas.
When it comes to Syngman Rhee’s war crimes against Japan, the invasion and seizure of Japan’s Takeshima and the massacre of Japanese fishermen are well known, but in fact, before that he had attempted to invade Tsushima.
It was while troops had been concentrated at the southern tip of Korea for that purpose that North Korea launched its lightning invasion.
Since he was capable of massacring even his own people without hesitation, it is not hard to imagine that the South Korean military would have committed a major massacre on Tsushima as well.
When the Korean War broke out, Syngman Rhee intensified his paranoia toward internal enemies and carried out mass executions of those who had been registered in the National Bodo League, an organization created to “re-educate” communists and their families.
The number of people massacred by the military and police is not known exactly, but is said to have exceeded one million.
It was not only obscured by the war, but continued to be concealed under the later military regimes as well.
To be continued.