Written on 2019-05-21.
This dialogue examines not only the South Korean side but also the Japanese side behind the forced labor rulings, the funding sources of Chongryon, the postwar structure of preferential treatment surrounding Zainichi Koreans, and the presence of lawsuit brokers common to both the comfort women and forced labor issues.
It sharply explores how activists, media figures, and lawyers inside Japan have been intertwined in sustaining anti-Japan propaganda.

2019-05-21.
If figures such as Fukushima Mizuho and lawyers of the same kind are defined as brokers of comfort-women lawsuits and anti-Japan activists, the whole matter becomes much clearer.
The chapter I published on 2019-01-04 under the title, “Really?… Especially the university that had the highest reputation among Zainichi Koreans was Hosei University… I see, that current still remains even now,” entered goo’s real-time top 10 last night.
So in the background of this latest ruling, it was not merely that the South Korean Supreme Court ran wild, but also that there was an aspect in which the Japanese side had set the table.
Otaka.
Exactly so.
It is a classic case of match-pump self-serving manipulation.
There is one more interesting point concerning “forced mobilization,” made by former Chongryon member Kim Ch’anjong, a second-generation Zainichi non-fiction writer.
It concerns the abundant funding sources of Choren, which was launched after the war under GHQ directives and later became Chongryon, and might well be called a separate operating arm of the Japanese Communist Party.
He says:
“The greatest source of funds was the unpaid wages and the like of forced laborers returning home.
By the end of 1946, claims for unpaid wages were sent in the name of the director of the Central Labor Department of Choren to Japanese companies that had employed the forcibly mobilized workers.
The total amount of those claims reached 43.66 million yen, and Choren collected a considerable sum from Japanese firms, most of which never reached the hands of the forced laborers but was diverted into Choren’s operational funds.”
(From Chongryon, Shincho Shinsho.)
That is what he says.
Takayama.
That is certainly an interesting story.
Come to think of it, in 1945 an organization called the League of Koreans in Japan was formed.
It later split into Mindan and Chongryon, but the man who created its original foundation was Kin Tenkai.
And what, of all things, was the theme he set for the league?
“To make Japan a country in which we can live comfortably” (laughs).
Otaka.
And that is exactly what it has become, is it not?
They are treated so preferentially that if one points out, “That is unfair,” one is told it is “hate,” and the issue cannot be touched with a scalpel.
Speaking of hate, with issues such as the comfort women problem, false information has been spread one-sidedly overseas, and all Japanese people have ended up in the upside-down situation of being the victims of hate speech.
Takayama.
That is absolutely true.
Whose country do they think Japan is?
As soon as the Korean League was launched, in Osaka they began issuing free tickets in great numbers so that Zainichi Koreans could ride the national railways and private railways freely.
Sato Eisaku, who was then head of the Osaka Railway Bureau, was astonished that revenue in the Osaka jurisdiction was almost nonexistent, and learned of this outrageous conduct by the Koreans.
Apparently he managed somehow to crush it, but the Korean League also created a scholarship association, and the children of Zainichi Koreans were able to enter Hosei, Meiji, and Chuo Universities freely.
Otaka.
Really?
Takayama.
The university that had an especially high reputation among Zainichi Koreans was Hosei University.
Otaka.
I see, that current still remains even now.
Yamaguchi Jiro, who said, “Abe is not human.
I will hack him to pieces,” is a professor in the Faculty of Law at Hosei University.
Takayama.
A professor who receives hundreds of millions of yen in research grants from the government and then shouts anti-government slogans.
And on top of that, the president is the deep-red Tanaka Yuko.
Otaka.
Ah, so that is the famous Sunday Morning (TBS) faction (laughs).
In any case, since the Japanese government has continued to fail in negotiations with the South Korean government over historical recognition, perhaps from now on it should simply say to the South Korean government, “From now on, all compensation claims regarding forced mobilization should be directed either to the South Korean government or to Chongryon” (big laughter).
Incoming Koreans.
Takayama.
Ever since South Korea was founded in 1948, that country has done nothing but strange things.
Before that, during the 36 years of Japanese rule, people lived in peace and comfort, with rice harvested in sufficient quantity.
There was abundant food and work, and people lived fulfilled lives.
Koreans say they were colonial subjects, but if they truly had been colonial subjects, they would never have been allowed to go in and out freely of the metropole, Japan.
And yet they even obtained jobs there without discrimination (laughs).
Otaka.
One can clearly see from Osamu Tajima’s How Bright Japanese Rule in Korea Was, as Told Through 300 Unique Advertisements (Business-sha), especially page 164, how vividly Korean women, who during the Yi Dynasty had been discriminated against under the saying “Anyone other than the yangban is not even a person,” came to enjoy life to the fullest.
Takayama.
In 1945, the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima and one great city disappeared.
At that time, however, Hiroshima City had a population of about 350,000.
Of these, about 80,000 were Koreans.
The Koreans who had come into Japan found no work in rural areas, so they all flowed into the cities.
Even so, the fact that one out of every five Hiroshima residents was an incoming Korean is a startling figure.
Seen in that light, one can understand why so many Koreans were among the victims of the atomic bomb.
Otaka.
So that is how many Koreans were in Japan’s cities.
Takayama.
It is hard to believe, but at that time passenger boats were making regular trips between Jeju Island and Osaka’s Ikaino.
Otaka.
It has now become Ikuno Ward and forms a Korean district.
It is the home area of Ko Yong-hui, the mother of Kim Jong-un, and of Mun Se-gwang, who assassinated Yuk Young-soo, the wife of Park Chung-hee.
I visited several times for reporting, and there were churches where Asahi’s reporter Uemura gave lectures, as well as Chongryon and Mindan offices and gathering places for people who had fled from Jeju Island, so it gave me the impression not of Ikaino but of “a strange realm” (laughs).
Takayama.
And now those incoming Koreans are making noise, calling themselves forcibly mobilized laborers and pitiable victims.
Otaka.
And because Japanese people are helping them do so, it is unbearable.
We do not even know how many people are carrying out anti-Japan activities under Japanese names.
Particularly when they act overseas under aliases and pour out false information defaming Japan, the situation becomes impossible to bring under control.
Even foreigners are deceived, thinking, “If it is testimony from a Japanese person, it must be true.”
Because these activists have been left untouched, conditions have been allowed in which a second and third Yoshida Seiji can emerge.
Takayama.
And Honda Katsuichi is still living comfortably too.
Otaka.
When I looked into the names of the activists involved this time in the forced labor issue, I found that some of them do indeed overlap with the comfort-women propaganda camp.
They are anti-Japan maniacs.
Takayama.
So the root is one and the same (laughs).
Otaka.
Just as with comfort women, there is a strong possibility that lawsuit brokers for forced labor cases are also moving behind the scenes.
In the comfort-women issue, Yang Sun-im, the mother-in-law of Uemura Takashi and head of the Bereaved Families Association of Pacific War Victims, formed in 2010 a “Private Claims Against Japan Litigation Group,” and if figures such as Fukushima Mizuho and lawyers of the same kind are defined as brokers of comfort-women lawsuits and anti-Japan activists, the whole matter becomes much clearer.