This article republishes the chapter originally posted on June 4, 2018, titled “This Was the Sino-Japanese War. Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, concluded after Japan’s victory, recognized the independence of Korea.” Through a column by Masayuki Takayama, it traces how Japan repeatedly suffered grave losses through involvement with the Korean Peninsula, from the Battle of Baekgang and the Sino-Japanese War to the Russo-Japanese War, the Korean War, and the Syngman Rhee Line.

The Reality of the Syngman Rhee Line and Japan-Korea History
April 17, 2019

Syngman Rhee, as a condition for releasing the captured fishermen, made Japan release 472 criminals, including Korean murderers who had been imprisoned in Japanese prisons, and grant them permanent residency.

This was a chapter I posted on June 4, 2018, under the title, “This was the Sino-Japanese War. Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, concluded after Japan won it, states: ‘Korea shall be recognized as independent.’”
It was a chapter in which I sent out to the world an essay by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Emphasis marked by ～ within the text is mine.
There is said to be a U.S.-North Korea summit soon.
And so the leaders of North and South Korea meet, and North Korea meets China.
But Japan is not being invited, Japan is outside the mosquito net, this is the failure of Abe diplomacy, and if this continues Japan will be isolated, Fukuyama Tetsuro is making a fuss.
At the same time, there are also many voices saying it is better not to get involved with such countries.
The first time Japan was drawn into trouble on that peninsula was the Battle of Baekgang.
Baekje was attacked by Silla, and its surviving retainers came asking for help.
Unlike Kang Sang-jung, the Japanese are dutiful, so when they went to help, a great Tang army was waiting.
*As for Kang Sang-jung, the correctness of my intuition when I first saw this man long ago on “Asamade Nama Terebi” has also now been confirmed in this month’s Series No. 18, Nihon Kyojin Retsuden, “Sekiguchi Hiroshi,” the famous host of Sunday Morning who loves “friendship” with North Korea, where Kang Sang-jung’s outrageous remarks, revealing more and more his true nature as an agent of the Korean Peninsula, are made painfully clear.
It was Ōkoshi who brought such a man onto watch9 as a commentator, saying things like, “I respect him…”
And that was not all.
Outrageously enough, it was NHK that placed him, a man like an agent of the Korean Peninsula, as the host of an art program for about a year.
Genuine North Korean operatives served as prosecutors…
At the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal held in Tokyo in 2000, which was driven by agents of the Korean Peninsula almost to a person…
Ikeda Eriko and Nagai Satoru were listed as sponsors…
And NHK gleefully broadcast it…
So it is only natural that NHK has continued unceasingly to engage in biased reporting.
All Japanese citizens…
Must realize that the final process of producing news programs…
Has been taken over by operatives and agents of the Korean Peninsula…
And must recognize the abnormality of this broadcaster…
The time when NHK had to be called to account came long ago. *
They too came out at Silla’s request, and in the end it was Tang and Japan that fought.
The peninsula juts out like a dagger at Japan’s flank.
Japan urged them toward autonomous independence, because having a Yi-dynasty Korea there, like a puppet of China, was also a security problem.
The Korean court split apart, each side called in Japan and China, and by the time they realized it, Japan and China were fighting a serious war.
This was the Sino-Japanese War.
Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, concluded after Japan won it, states that “Korea shall be recognized as independent.”
There have been many wars in the world, but there has never been an example of a war fought in order to have another country’s independence recognized.
And yet, after Japan went that far, what independent Korea did was bring Russia into its own country and offer the Russian navy a base at Masanpo, right in front of Tsushima.
Before Japan knew it, it was fighting the Russo-Japanese War, staking the fate of the nation against the world’s strongest Russian army and a Russian navy four times the scale of the Japanese fleet.
In these two wars Japan lost 120,000 dead, but the very Koreans who had triggered them remained mere onlookers the whole time.
Ahead of the coming U.S.-North Korea summit, Associate Professor Elizabeth Stanley of Georgetown University contributed an article under the title, “The Koreans, before they know it, are reduced to supporting roles,” pointing out their sly character of drawing other countries in and then quietly disappearing from center stage.
The example she gives is the Korean War that began in 1950.
Kim Il-sung, a Soviet puppet, obtained Stalin’s permission and at dawn on June 25 crossed the 38th parallel in one rush, with enough momentum to drive Syngman Rhee, who had fled to Busan, into the Sea of Japan.
The U.S. military came out.
With Japanese wisdom also playing a part, the Incheon landing succeeded and the tide turned.
The U.S. forces reached the Yalu River, but then the Chinese forces came out, and in the end it became a U.S.-China war.
During that time, the Koreans quickly withdrew into supporting roles, while Syngman Rhee drew the Rhee Line, occupied Takeshima, seized 328 Japanese fishing boats, killed 44 fishermen, detained about 4,000 people, and abused them by cramming as many as 20 into narrow cells.
Syngman Rhee, as a condition for releasing the captured fishermen, made Japan release 472 criminals, including Korean murderers who had been imprisoned in Japanese prisons, and grant them permanent residency.
*Is it not chilling to think what their descendants may now be doing in Japan.
Who can say that descendants are not involved in cases of fatal abuse or brutal murders.
And the Tokyo-centered media, concentrated in one place and refusing to report the truth, then conduct torrential, concentrated coverage as though it were the greatest incident in the world.
The agents of China and the Korean Peninsula, together with anti-Japanese Japanese who aid the division of Japan, along with China and the Korean Peninsula themselves, frequently induce the U.N. human rights bodies to issue human rights recommendations against Japan so that Japan will not be allowed to stand beside the United States as a leader…
They have halted the advance of the Turntable of Civilization and have helped create the unstable and extremely dangerous world of today. *
They leave the wars to other countries, while they themselves pursue selfish national interests behind the scenes.
Professor Stanley also sees that “the two Koreas are now earnestly attempting the same setup.”
Professor Furuta Hiroshi of the University of Tsukuba, who has deep knowledge of Korean Peninsula issues, recommends that Japanese people apply the “three must-nots” to the peninsula: “do not teach, do not help, do not get involved.”
In fact, Japan suffered only damage from involvement with the peninsula, but during the period when it did not get involved, namely during the Korean War, apart from the damage of the Syngman Rhee Line, it was blessed not only with special procurement from the Korean War but also with the great good fortune of a change in U.S. occupation policy.
MacArthur had been carrying out a dismantling policy intended to ensure that Japan would never again become a threat to whites, dragging its industrial level back to the early Meiji period, that is, to an age when it could do no more than make pots and kettles.
That was the role of Edwin Pauley of the postwar reparations mission, and when the first stage, the dismantling of heavy industry and the aircraft industry, had ended and the next stage was beginning, that war broke out.
Without Japanese technology, the U.S. military could not fight.
The dismantling of Japan came to an end.
Fukuyama is desperate to drag Japan in.
But the Japanese people will probably not be taken in by his words.
Because history has taught, again and again, that it is best not to get involved with them.
To be continued.