Published on July 13, 2019.
Based on an article by Sankei Shimbun journalist Abiru Rui, this chapter critically examines South Korea’s expectation that the United States would mediate Japan’s normalization of export controls on semiconductor materials bound for South Korea.
Through articles in the Chosun Ilbo, it points out South Korea’s dependence on the United States, its criticism of Japan, the issue of illegal exports of strategic materials, and the contradiction of having unilaterally broken the Japan-South Korea comfort women agreement praised by the United States.

July 13, 2019.
The students, more than 40 percent of them, who answered that the Japanese government should also review the comfort women issue, have not a shred of intelligence and have absolutely no qualification to be university students whose proper duty is to pursue learning.
They must read this with their eyes wide open.
The following is from an article by Abiru Rui, one of the finest active newspaper journalists, published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun.
Those who watch NHK news about South Korea’s words and actions should immediately notice that the people who control NHK’s news department do not report at all the following facts that Abiru, as a journalist, quite naturally teaches us.
Do they intentionally not report them?
Or do they truly not know them?
If the latter is the case, they have no qualification as journalists, and they must return their license as a news organization.
They are truly far too terrible.
It is written in the Broadcasting Act, or in the code of journalistic ethics.
A reporter must never insert his own personal opinions when reporting.
In order to evade this, they fabricated a word such as “caster,” and make Arima, on whose face it is written that he is a red labor-union activist, and the vicious Kuwako, who disguises with frequent laughter the fact that her brain consists only of a masochistic view of history and pseudo-moralism acquired by reading the Asahi Shimbun and watching television, utter comments in tune with the Asahi Shimbun.
They repeatedly carry out insidious information manipulation in an attempt to force the Japanese people under their own ideology.
This is the reality of Japan’s state-run broadcaster.
When it reports on matters related to China, it is the Japan branch of China’s state-run broadcaster.
When it reports on matters related to today’s South Korea, it is completely the Japan branch of South Korea’s state-run broadcaster.
Why does such a thing happen?
Needless to say, it is because their agents control NHK’s news department.
In China’s case, probably whenever something happens, or rather day and night, intelligence officers stationed at the Chinese embassy visit NHK to give guidance.
Regarding the article below, the management of Kindai University, the lowest kind of people who have invited as professors South Koreans raised under the anti-Japanese education that South Korea has continued for 74 years after the war and allow them to indoctrinate students as they please, and the more than 40 percent of students who answered that the Japanese government should also review the comfort women issue, have not a shred of intelligence and have absolutely no qualification to be university students whose proper duty is to pursue learning.
What has long been said is completely true.
Stupid Kindai.
Those more than 40 percent of students who answered that the Japanese government should also review the comfort women issue must read this with their eyes wide open.
It is fine if fools are fools, but in order not to become traitors or criminals, they must read it with their eyes wide open.
South Korea, Relying on America When in Trouble.
Regarding Japan’s normalization of export controls on semiconductor materials bound for South Korea, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha held a telephone conversation on the 10th with U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo and expressed concern about Japan’s measures.
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that Pompeo showed understanding, but South Korean government announcements are not very reliable, so the truth is unknown.
However, at the very least, it is clear that South Korea is placing its hopes in U.S. mediation between Japan and South Korea.
In fact, if one traces recent articles in South Korea’s major newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, one can clearly see its habit of relying on the United States when in trouble.
Impatience as the Situation Does Not Move.
For example, an article dated the 8th titled “South Korea Sends SOS to the United States; Did Japan Block It in Advance?” writes as follows.
“The view is that Japan began saying ‘South Korea is violating North Korea sanctions’ because it aims to make it difficult for the United States, which strongly calls for ‘maintaining sanctions,’ to step in as mediator.”
One can sense its impatience that the United States is not coming in as intermediary.
A column dated the 9th, “U.S. Official: ‘Why Must We Mediate between South Korea and Japan?’” states firmly.
“It can be called exceptional that, despite the worsening of South Korea-Japan relations, the U.S. government is not actively moving.”
One can read from this an assumption that the United States moves according to South Korea’s convenience.
An article of the same date, “South Korean Senior Officials Visit the U.S. Seeking Support, but the U.S. Remains Passive,” raised a cry of distress.
“The United States is also silent about Japan’s claim that ‘etching gas may be flowing to North Korea through South Korea.’”
“Regarding the U.S. attitude, there is speculation that Japan may have explained to the United States before taking this economic retaliatory measure, or that the United States may have sympathized with part of it.”
An article dated the 10th, “Is America’s Silence ‘Calculated’?” piles up even more speculation.
“The silence of the United States, which holds the key to mediation, is being prolonged. It is analyzed that this may be a ‘strategic silence’ calculated on the basis of prior consensus with Japan and collateral benefits to its own semiconductor industry.”
I do not think the United States cares that much about South Korea’s movements, but the South Korean side seems to think to the end that it is only natural for the United States to mediate.
An article dated the 11th, “Senior South Korean Presidential Office Official Visits U.S. to Discuss Japan’s Export Restrictions and North Korean Nuclear Issue,” points out the following.
“It is expected that he will also actively appeal the unfairness of Japan’s export restriction measures, and attention is focused on whether he will request mediation from the U.S. side.”
An article of the same date, “South Korea-Japan Lobbying Battle Opens in Washington,” also presents the same perspective.
“Attention is focused on whether the United States will embark on full-scale mediation regarding the current situation.”
It is strange that they apparently believe that if the United States intervenes, it will work in South Korea’s favor.
Why do they not consider that the opposite could also happen?
They seem to have completely forgotten that they unilaterally broke the Japan-South Korea agreement on the comfort women issue, which the United States witnessed and praised, and thereby made the United States lose face.
Japan-Bashing as Well.
In its editorial dated the 8th, “‘South Korea Handed Over Poison Gas Materials to the North,’ Says Japan—Show the Evidence,” the newspaper harshly criticized Japan as follows.
“Has Japan become a country that even mobilizes fake news in order to rationalize economic retaliation against a neighboring country?”
However, in an article dated May 17, “Illegal Exports from South Korea of Strategic Materials Convertible to Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapidly Increase,” the same newspaper itself reported that large quantities of strategic materials that can be diverted to missile warhead processing, uranium enrichment, and the like had been illegally exported.
Before rushing into easy Japan-bashing and reliance on the United States, why not acquire the habit of looking at your own country a little more objectively?
Editorial writer and political news editor.