Drawing on material published in Hanada Selection: Korea, Two Lies — Forced Labor and Comfort Women, this passage argues that anti-Japanese descriptions in South Korea’s state-authorized elementary and middle school textbooks, including accounts of the March First Movement and the conflation of the Women’s Volunteer Corps with comfort women, have diverged from historical fact and functioned as tools for implanting hatred and resentment toward Japan in children.
By referring to the legal character of the Japan–Korea Annexation, the judicial handling of the March First disturbances, and the actual nature of the Women’s Volunteer Corps, it denounces South Korean textbooks as media of anti-Japanese education filled with distortion and fabrication, a structure that continues to this day.
In its closing line, the passage also directs strong criticism at Japanese media voices that speak about Japan–South Korea relations without first reading documents publicly posted through the United Nations framework.

2019-03-01
1-3. Distortion of History.
Furthermore, the state-authorized middle school national history textbooks of the 1990s contained passages such as the following.

The following is from page 226 of the monthly magazine Hanada Selection: Korea, Two Lies — Forced Labor and Military Comfort Women (926 yen plus tax, Asuka Shinsha).
It was posted on the official website of a United Nations committee.
The Reality of Anti-Japanism in South Korea.
Japan NGO Network Against Racial Discrimination.
Preface omitted.

III. Background.

1. History textbooks filled with anti-Japanese descriptions.

1-1. Completely at variance with historical fact.
In the state-authorized South Korean elementary school social studies textbooks used in the 1990s, Japan’s “atrocities” were described everywhere, and for example there were entries such as the following, which drive children toward anti-Japanese conduct.
“Japan merged our country into its own, took everything from us, and oppressed our people.”
“Let us discuss how we should face Japan, which committed atrocities.”
However, this historical perception is completely different from historical fact.
In reality, Japan and the Korean Empire, in accordance with international law and domestic law, concluded the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty by their respective wills, and the “annexation” of the two countries was realized, just as with the “union” of England and Scotland.
As a result, the people of the Korean Empire came to possess rights and duties as Japanese subjects.
After annexation, just as the former West German region did for the former East German region after German reunification, Japan, both government and private sector, made enormous investments for the modernization of the Korean Peninsula.
Because the Korean people also actively accepted this, it is a fact that the Korean Peninsula achieved modernization in only thirty-five years, at a speed without parallel in the world.

1-2. Anti-Japanese middle and high school textbooks.
Middle school and high school history textbooks are likewise filled with anti-Japanese descriptions, and for example the state-authorized middle school national history textbook of the 1990s contains the following description regarding the so-called March First Movement that occurred in 1910.
“Girls under the age of ten, women, and schoolgirls devoted their passion to their motherland, and for the simple charge of crying out for independence, they were subjected to humiliating treatment and beaten. We were told that three hundred little girls under the age of seven had already been shot to death.”
This is propagandistic writing that appeals to the emotions of children and stirs up hatred and resentment toward Japan.
However, this too has no basis whatsoever and is not historical fact.
The March First Movement initially began with students and religious figures seeking independence from Japan, but it soon developed into a nationwide riot involving arson, looting, and murder.
However, by the judgment of the Supreme Court, the crime of insurrection was not applied to this riot, and only the Security Law and the Publication Law were applied.
Naturally, not a single person was arrested merely for shouting for independence.
In the March First riot, six Japanese gendarmes and two police officers were massacred, and many buildings were set on fire, yet not a single person received the death penalty, there were no prison terms of more than fifteen years, and only eighty people received sentences of more than three years.
Moreover, their terms were reduced to less than half by the general amnesty of 1920.

1-3. Distortion of history.
Furthermore, the state-authorized middle school national history textbooks of the 1990s contained the following description.
“During the Second World War, even women were taken away under the name of the Volunteer Corps and became victims as comfort women for the Japanese military.”
This description too is plainly a distortion of history.
The Volunteer Corps were women who worked in factories during the war, and they were not forcibly gathered; on the Korean Peninsula, all of them were recruited on a voluntary basis.
Of course, they had absolutely nothing to do with comfort women, and among the people who came forward claiming to be former comfort women, not a single one testified that she had been forcibly taken as part of the Volunteer Corps and made into a comfort woman.
As seen above, South Korean textbooks are filled with distortions and fabrications of history, and are used as tools to implant hatred and resentment toward Japan in children.
And this continues to the present day.
To be continued.

Arima and Kuwako of News Watch 9 should read this document posted through the United Nations before speaking about Japan–South Korea relations.