Originally published on March 1, 2019, this piece draws on an essay by Abiru Rui in the Sankei Shimbun and argues that South Korea and The Asahi Shimbun have employed remarkably similar methods of shifting the issue and manipulating impressions in disputes between Japan and South Korea.
In particular, regarding the comfort women issue, it contends that The Asahi Shimbun bears grave responsibility for repeatedly spreading Seiji Yoshida’s false testimony, prompting apologies from the Japanese government, and thereby turning the issue into an accepted “fact.”
It further shows how South Korea’s shifting of the issue in the radar-lock incident closely resembles the retreat and substitution seen in The Asahi Shimbun’s editorials, concluding that Asahi’s reporting stance itself was a major cause of the deterioration in Japan–South Korea relations.

2019-03-01
If Asahi, in its explanatory article, is going to criticize Japan’s past as though it were someone else’s affair, then should it not rather write the following.
“In the first place, the issue of the former comfort women would never have arisen without Asahi’s reporting.”

As I have mentioned many times, Abiru Rui is one of the very few active newspaper reporters, that is, journalists, who possess the highest level of insight in Japan.
The following is from his article published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun.
The passages between the asterisks are mine.
South Korea and The Asahi Shimbun.
Strikingly similar methods.
I could not help admiring it as a splendid coordinated play.
I am referring to The Asahi Shimbun and South Korea.
In its explanatory article, “Easy to Understand from the Beginning!,” in the morning edition of the 23rd, Asahi made the following assertion concerning the “March First Independence Movement,” which arose in 1919 in resistance to Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula.
Set and spike.
“In the first place, the issues of the former wartime laborers and former comfort women would never have arisen without Japan’s rule.”
Then, on the 25th, the Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo Japanese Edition distributed an article with the headline, “Asahi Shimbun: ‘Without Japan’s rule, the wartime labor and comfort women issues would not have occurred,’” excerpting Asahi’s article including this passage.
At once, I pictured before my eyes a scene in which a volleyball skillfully set by Asahi was cleanly spiked by South Korea.
The two sides are helping one another reinforce the argument that when problems arise between the two countries and South Korea’s criticism of Japan intensifies, Japan is to blame.
But is that really so.
Several years ago, the author parodied a waka poem by Ariwara no Narihira and composed this poor little verse.
Were there never Asahi in this world at all.
Japan–South Korea relations would be calm and peaceful.
I replaced “cherry blossoms” in the original poem with “Asahi,” and “the hearts of spring” with “Japan–South Korea relations,” but in truth I sincerely think so.
That Japan–South Korea relations have deteriorated this far must owe a great deal to Asahi’s responsibility for igniting the comfort women issue and for persistently publishing, eighteen times, and spreading throughout the world, the falsehoods of Seiji Yoshida, who claimed that women had been forcibly taken from the Korean Peninsula and made into comfort women.
Based on false articles.
Just before Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi’s visit to South Korea in January 1992, Asahi carried on its front page an article titled, “Materials Showing Military Involvement in Comfort Stations,” and alongside it published an explanatory article containing the following statements, later shown to be false.
“It is said that about 80 percent were Korean women.”
“Korean women were forcibly taken under the name of the Women’s Volunteer Corps.”
“The number is said to be anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000.”
All of them were baseless fabrications, yet the shaken Miyazawa Cabinet apologized without even investigating the facts, with Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi issuing a statement of “apology and reflection.”
Abroad, it was reported that the Japanese government had acknowledged coercion, and Prime Minister Miyazawa, upon visiting South Korea, apologized no fewer than eight times.
Because the government repeatedly apologized on the premise of Asahi’s false articles, it can be said that the issue was turned into an established fact.
Repeated substitution of the issue.
In the radar-lock incident involving a Maritime Self-Defense Force patrol aircraft, South Korea denied that the radar illumination had been directed at the patrol aircraft, and when even that became difficult to maintain, it then shifted the issue by claiming that the patrol aircraft’s low-altitude flight was an act of intimidation.
This South Korean method also closely resembles the assertions made in Asahi editorials on the comfort women issue.
This is exactly what all Japanese citizens blessed with discernment had been thinking, just as Mr. Abiru had been thinking.
In the editorial of January 12, 1992, “Let Us Not Turn Our Eyes Away from History,” it flatly asserted forced relocation as fact, yet in the editorial of March 20, 1993, “Japan’s Morality Is Being Tested,” because the theory of forced relocation was beginning to lose ground, it quietly retreated to the conjecture that forced relocation probably had occurred.
In the editorial of March 31, 1997, “Let Us Not Turn Our Eyes Away from History,” it switched the issue by saying that whether forced relocation had existed was not the real question, and in the editorial of June 21, 2014, “Return to the Starting Point of Solving the Problem,” it did not even touch on forced relocation itself.
Then, in the front-page article of August 5 of the same year, it went so far as to evade the matter by saying that the focus was women’s human rights.
In other words, it ignored what it itself had originally made into an issue, what sort of arguments it had developed, and how it had affected Japan–South Korea relations.
If Asahi, in its explanatory article, is going to criticize Japan’s past as though it were someone else’s affair, then should it not rather write the following.
“In the first place, the issue of the former comfort women would never have arisen without Asahi’s reporting.”
（Editorial Writer and Political Desk Editorial Board Member）