Published on August 3, 2019.
This essay discusses the formation of anti-Japanese consciousness in South Korean history education through the Syngman Rhee administration, the Jeju incident, the Korean War, the Park Chung-hee administration, the Japan–South Korea Basic Treaty, Japanese economic cooperation, and the evolution of textbook education.
The author argues that the “false memories” implanted in South Korean children have distorted modern Japan–South Korea relations.

August 3, 2019.
The world has overlooked the fact that countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” such as the Korean Peninsula and China, have continued for seventy postwar years to practice Nazism under the name of anti-Japanese education.
The lies and fabrications of the South Korean government are that merciless.
I immediately sensed that this was dangerous.
This is the chapter I published on April 16, 2019, under that title.
I am republishing the chapter I published on December 5, 2018, under the title: “The Japan–South Korea relationship depicted by South Korean history education is, so to speak, one of ‘100 percent perpetrator and 100 percent victim,’ and of ‘absolute evil and absolute justice.’”
Astonished and appalled by President Lee Myung-bak’s words and actions in his final period, I wondered what kind of country South Korea really was, and searched the Internet about South Korea and the Korean Peninsula.
In one hour, I understood the reality of the Korean Peninsula.
Having not only subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun for a long time but also received postwar education, I learned for the first time the reality of South Korea, which I had not understood at all.
Even without searching about North Korea, anyone can understand that it is a terrible country beyond description.
A little while ago, I found an article that is also the essence of the Internet, the greatest library in human history.
What is happening in South Korea now should make sense only after one knows these facts.
In other words, unless one knows these facts, one cannot understand Koreans—and that is extremely dangerous for Japanese people.
Just as I personally encountered an evil so severe that it led to a grave illness in which I nearly lost my life, Japan, in fact, has long continued to encounter this evil and continued to be exposed to it.
They continue to exercise their evil not only against Japan, but also with the United States and the United Nations as their main battlefields.
The truth presented by this painstaking work is the true nature of anti-Japanese propaganda.
Against Japan, a country where The Turntable of Civilization is turning as divine providence, and which must lead the world alongside the United States…
countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” such as the Korean Peninsula and China…
have continued for seventy postwar years to practice Nazism under the name of anti-Japanese education, and the world has overlooked it.
It is no exaggeration to say that this is the true reason why the world remains unstable and full of conflicts.
The fact that I, having no choice, have appeared in this way carrying The Turntable of Civilization…
was in fact very important not only for me and, of course, for my readers…
but also for Japan and the world.
The following is the article I found.
It was after reading South Korean history textbooks.
Japanese people were depicted as cold-blooded and merciless “demons.”
Modern Japan was said to have done “only slaughter and plunder” toward Korea.
◆ Why Did South Korea Rewrite History? Considering Its Motives and Background, Part Two, by Yamada Takaaki.
The Syngman Rhee era, which became the true beginning of South Korea’s misfortune.
Now, let us return to the main subject.
With Japan’s defeat, the right to govern Korea was transferred from the Government-General to the United States.
At first, various factions were in turmoil over the founding of the state, and the Soviet Union quickly installed a puppet.
The provisional government and the independence army themselves were not recognized, but Syngman Rhee personally, who came from that government, had studied in the United States and had also engaged in lobbying there, and so he was eventually elevated to the head of an anti-communist puppet regime.
However, the selfish demand that “Korea be added to the Allied powers” was rejected.
That was because it was thought that those who had not fought and shed blood had no right to push themselves forward.
Therefore, for Koreans to call themselves “victorious people” or “Allied people” is simply contrary to fact.
One cannot help feeling sympathy over the fact that this man seized dictatorial power as the first president.
The period from Rhee’s return to Korea until his exile was a “dark age,” and it is abnormal that modern Koreans lack this memory.
In many senses, Syngman Rhee himself was the root of all evil, and his era itself was exactly the “Japanese imperial rule” depicted in South Korean history education.
The first evil deed that Syngman Rhee committed was the “Jeju Island Incident,” in short, a massacre of communists and islanders suspected of being communists.
As a result, tens of thousands of citizens were killed, and other tens of thousands fled to Japan and settled there.
The massacres continued afterward, and the island’s population sharply decreased.
Similar massacres, though smaller in scale, were carried out in other regions as well.
When speaking of Syngman Rhee’s war crimes against Japan, the invasion and seizure of Japanese territory Takeshima and the massacre of Japanese fishermen are famous, but in fact, before that, he tried to invade Tsushima.
While he had gathered forces at the southern end of South Korea for that purpose, North Korea’s lightning invasion occurred.
Since he was capable of massacring even his own citizens without hesitation, it is not difficult to imagine that the South Korean army would have committed a massacre on Tsushima.
When the Korean War broke out, Syngman Rhee intensified his delusions about internal enemies and executed large numbers of people who had been registered in the National Guidance League, an organization for re-educating communists and their families.
The number of people massacred by the military and police is not precisely known, but it is said to exceed one million.
It was not only obscured by the war, but also continued to be concealed under the later military regimes.
At first, the South Korean army was driven into the southern part of the peninsula, but with the entry of the U.S. military into the war, it rallied, and four months later reached the Yalu River on the Chinese–Korean border.
However, although the war should have ended with the collapse of North Korea, the entry of the Chinese army again pushed the front back to the 38th parallel, and the war ultimately continued for three years.
As a result, millions of soldiers and civilians became victims, and most of the Korean Peninsula was devastated.
Incidentally, South Korea has not once demanded that China, which prolonged the war and increased the casualties, face and settle the past.
After that, Syngman Rhee continued to cling to the position of dictator until the middle of 1960.
Rhee purged not only communists but also anyone who opposed him as political criminals, and thoroughly suppressed demonstrations and opposition movements.
Koreans who knew the Japanese era were enraged at the time, saying, “Where exactly is this ‘liberation’?
Is this not a society far worse than under Japanese imperial rule?”
Syngman Rhee cracked down on this movement through a reign of terror involving control of thought and speech, a system of informants, and secret police.
Thus, he monitored and suppressed pro-Japanese thoughts and statements, caused the generation that knew the Japanese era through experience to keep silent out of fear, created a division between generations, and used the media and public education to implant “false memories” in children.
During the Pacific War, Korea received no bombing, had virtually no conscription—some people were conscripted, but the war ended before they were sent to the front—and was subjected only to requisition of goods and forced labor, which was exceptional treatment for a “colony.”
As a result, at the end of the war, the Japanese home islands had produced vast numbers of war dead and been reduced to ashes, while Korea was almost unharmed.
In other words, after the war, Japan’s and Korea’s economic and social conditions had completely reversed.
However, by the time Syngman Rhee left, South Korea had fallen into the ranks of the poorest countries, and the conditions of the two had reversed again.
In the end, Syngman Rhee contributed nothing at all to the development of South Korean society and economy; he merely wielded dictatorial power, imposed oppression, massacred large numbers of his own citizens, and impoverished them.
Incidentally, since the South Korean government still conceals this shameful part of its history and, conversely, fabricates nonexistent massacres by the Japanese military and teaches children false history, is it not something like a half-accomplice?
Why was a false national history passed down?
After Syngman Rhee’s exile, South Korea was in turmoil for a while, but the one who ultimately seized power was Park Chung-hee.
As is well known, he was a former officer of the old army, and through the conclusion of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and South Korea, he normalized relations between the two countries and obtained enormous funds from Japan.
Park developed heavy industries such as steel and petrochemicals and expanded social infrastructure, achieving high economic growth called the “Miracle on the Han River.”
However, if one has Japanese funds amounting to more than twice the national budget and a neighbor that teaches technology and know-how step by step with a sense of mission, then, omitted, it does not seem so difficult to create a “miracle.”
Thus South Korea was able to escape poverty not once, but twice, through Japan’s aid and cooperation.
However, President Park Chung-hee also did not revise the propaganda that made Japan absolute evil.
Because he thoroughly suppressed anti-government demonstrations and movements, he became the target of resentment among some citizens.
For a military dictatorship that inevitably produces internal friction, an object toward which people’s hatred and dissatisfaction can be diverted is indispensable.
North Korea and communists were not enough for that role.
In general, many anti-government people were sympathizers with them.
He needed an “enemy of the people” unrelated to ideological divisions.
Perhaps from such political calculations, Park Chung-hee inherited Japan-demonizing education as it was.
Moreover, since he made all the results of Japanese economic assistance into his own achievements, unlike the image generally believed in Japan, it is hard to say that he was a very fair person.
No, beyond that, it seems that he added something unnecessary to public education.
That was the cultivation of pride in the style of “our people have been great since ancient times.”
In other words, he seems to have strengthened a self-glorifying view of history, though I note that I do not have materials on hand regarding this and that this is only hearsay.
However, put another way, that also meant degrading Japan as a “culturally backward country.”
That is because the excellence of one’s own people emerges through comparison with others, and the object of comparison was naturally not China, but ancient and medieval Japan.
South Korean children are taught things such as “our ancestors taught the Japanese such-and-such” and “in the past, we were more advanced than Japan.”
The advanced culture said to have been transmitted by Korea includes, in ancient times, rice cultivation, textiles, architecture, Buddhism, paper, and writing; during Hideyoshi’s invasion, pottery-making techniques; and during the Edo period, medicine, Confucian studies, calligraphy, and painting through the Korean missions to Japan.
In this way, through relativization with Japan, they come to possess an ethnic sense of superiority, thinking that “until the Meiji Restoration, Korea was the culturally advanced country,” or that “our ancestors were teachers who civilized the barbaric Japanese.”
Then, because Hideyoshi’s invasion and modern Japan’s invasion are treated heavily, they naturally become indignant that “kindness was repaid with enmity.”
Thus, the foundation of the “strange history education” that cultivates both a sense of superiority over Japan and a victim consciousness down to the present day is completed.
Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, who later became presidents, were also from the same military academy line as Park, and they inherited anti-Japanese education.
The reason was probably similar to what was described above.
Military regimes inevitably need an object that will bear people’s hatred.
Moreover, Chun Doo-hwan was a person who suddenly suppressed citizens in such events as the Gwangju Incident.
He also wanted to create a miracle like Park’s and tried to draw enormous economic aid from Japan.
As a means to that end, he picked a fight over the textbook issue.
Why would such a man revise anti-Japanese education?
In 1988, South Korea finally shifted to a democratic system.
In principle, freedom of thought and speech was also largely guaranteed.
However, through forty years of internal propaganda, “false memories” had completely become established facts, and it was already too late.
Koreans had become completely united spiritually with the “founding father.”
Now the independence activists are the identity of the Korean people.
In other words, ordinary citizens believe that “we fought bravely against the demon called Japanese imperialism and won,” and they are the guardians of that myth, so overturning it has become anything but easy.
“Japan–South Korea friendship,” which did not exist from the beginning.
Now, it is not that I have had no personal dealings with Koreans.
My experience at that time was that “they did not seem like strangers at all.”
Around me, there are people who did business with Koreans and were deceived, copied, or had payments defaulted on, but fortunately I have never had an unpleasant experience.
Therefore, personally, I still think of the Koreans I know as relatives.
Perhaps the reason Japanese people one hundred years ago devoted themselves to the modernization of Korean society with goodwill and a sense of mission that were somewhat beyond normal bounds was this kind of feeling.
I think the truth may unexpectedly be that “they did not seem like strangers” or that “they looked like long-lost brothers living in miserable circumstances.”
However, in such personal relationships, I found it strange that even intelligent and gentle Koreans, when by some chance the topic turned to history, would change color.
It was as if people abused in childhood were tormented by flashbacks.
I learned the reason fifteen years ago, after reading translated South Korean history textbooks.
Japanese people were depicted as cold-blooded and merciless “demons.”
Modern Japan was said to have done “only slaughter and plunder” toward Korea.
The lies and fabrications of the South Korean government are that merciless.
I immediately sensed that this was dangerous.
Children naturally grow up believing that all of it is fact.
To be continued.