Published on April 21, 2019.
Based on a chapter originally published on October 7, 2015, this essay discusses the discriminatory consciousness underlying Korean anti-Japan sentiment and the structure of contempt for Japanese culture found in Korean history textbooks.
Drawing on an essay by TEI Taikin, it argues that the Sinocentric worldview still embedded in Korean society—the idea that those culturally closer to China are superior while Japan is inferior—appears repeatedly in textbook language such as “transmission” and “instruction.”
The essay contends that relations between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago in antiquity should properly be understood as a history of exchange, but that Korean education instead teaches a one-sided narrative in which the peninsula “civilized” Japan, thereby fostering attitudes of disregard and contempt toward Japanese culture.

2019-04-21
The relationship between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago in antiquity
is a history of “exchange,”
but South Korea habitually emphasizes that the peninsula, on the premise of its “cultural advancement” and “superiority,”
“transmitted” culture to Japan.

The following is from a chapter I published on October 7, 2015,
under the title:
This is from this month’s issue of SAPIO, which a friend said he bought at a station kiosk, though somewhat bewildered by the gaudiness of its cover.
This issue carries a major feature analyzing the pathology of Korea,
from the perspective that the root cause of Korean “anti-Japanism”
lies in the discriminatory consciousness traditionally embedded in the country called Korea,
and it places Korean writers at the center of that analysis.
From this opening alone, readers should already notice that the correctness of my own argument has already been proven.
TEI Taikin, specially appointed professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University.
Opening omitted.
Koreans’ jealousy toward the Japanese is also influenced by the traditional Sinocentric worldview.
The Sinocentric worldview is a way of seeing the world by dividing it into the civilized center and the barbarians,
a worldview of Chinese civilization that looks down on the Yi and the Di as barbarians.
Within that “Sinocentric order,”
Koreans have a consciousness that they themselves are culturally closer to China,
and there exists a recognition that Japan is culturally inferior to them.
Contempt for Japanese culture.
That way of thinking can also be seen in Korean history textbooks.
For example, in Korean high-school history textbooks, in passages dealing with Japan in relation to the Three Kingdoms period of Silla, Baekje, and Goguryeo,
the words “transmission” and “instruction” repeatedly appear.
“Carrying new cultural goods with them to Japan, our people enlightened the Japanese of that indigenous society.
(…)
They taught the Five Classics of Confucianism and painting, and transmitted the methods of making paper and ink.”
“Immigrants who moved from our country to the Japanese archipelago transmitted advanced technology and culture, gave birth to the Yamato polity, and contributed to the formation of ancient Asuka culture.”
(Compiled by the National Institute of Korean History, 1996)
That is the sort of tone one finds.
The relationship between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago in antiquity
is a history of “exchange,”
but South Korea regularly emphasizes that the peninsula, on the premise of its “cultural advancement” and “superiority,”
“transmitted” culture to Japan.
Therefore,
among Koreans educated in South Korea,
there is a strong tendency to treat Japanese culture with disregard and contempt.
It would be no exaggeration at all to say that this attitude is no different from that of the editorial writers at the Asahi Shimbun and the so-called cultural figures.