Published on August 17, 2019. This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s book Korea and the Media Shamelessly Tell Lies, discussing William Arson Grebst’s observations of late nineteenth-century Korea, the Kim Ok-gyun incident, the Sino-Japanese War, Japanese rule, postwar anti-Japanese actions, the Syngman Rhee Line, and the question of evacuating Japanese nationals from Korea.

August 17, 2019.
He walked through Korea at the end of the nineteenth century and wrote a book titled The Tragedy of Korea…the young man expressed his astonishment and despair that “such a country still remained on the earth,” and concluded that “only the Japanese can put an end to it.”
The following is from the latest book by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, published by Tokuma Shoten on June 30, 2019, under the title Korea and the Media Shamelessly Tell Lies.
It is a book that every Japanese citizen must read, and they must go at once to the nearest bookstore to buy it.
It is also a must-read book for people throughout the world, and as for this, though I am ashamed of my poor English ability, I wish to make it known to as many people around the world as possible.
Korea, which has reverted to antiquity.
William Arson Grebst, a Swedish youth still only eighteen years old, walked through Korea at the end of the nineteenth century and wrote a book titled The Tragedy of Korea.
A Japanese translation has been published, but since the translator is Korean, mistranslations are abundant; for example, where the original says “this lazy race,” it is rendered as “this optimistic race.”
Even so, the scene of public execution could not, as expected, be glossed over.
It describes how the condemned man’s hands and feet were tightly bound with rope, how “a pole was twisted between both legs and, with all their strength, one leg was crushed, until at last there came the dull sound of the bones being shattered and crushed…” and how “when he fainted, water was poured over him to bring him back to consciousness,” after which the other leg was crushed in the same way, and further, “the bones of the arms were broken, the ribs were broken,” and “finally he was strangled to death with a silk cord.”
The young man expressed his astonishment and despair that “such a country still remained on the earth,” and concluded that “only the Japanese can put an end to it.”
The book was published in 1894.
In the same year, assassins sent by Queen Min shot and killed the Enlightenment Party figure Kim Ok-gyun in Shanghai.
His body was subjected in Keijō to the punishment of lingchi, and it was further cut into pieces; the head was exposed in Gyeonggi Province, while the hands and feet were displayed in Gyeongsang Province and Hamgyong Province.
Kim Ok-gyun had studied under Fukuzawa Yukichi and had learned at Keio Gijuku.
Kitasato Shibasaburō, who created the medical faculty at that same Keio, was, around the time when Kim Ok-gyun’s head was being displayed, on his way to Hong Kong to help with the plague disaster there.
And in only three days, he discovered the plague bacillus, which the medical world of Europe had been desperately pursuing since the Black Death of the fourteenth century, and also ascertained that it was transmitted by rats.
It is an episode that shows the difference between the two countries to a degree that makes one sad, and following this, in the same year, the Sino-Japanese War broke out.
Japan won the war despite suffering 30,000 war dead, eliminated China’s influence from the peninsula, and forced recognition of the independence of Joseon Korea.
But Korea was like Clara in Heidi, Girl of the Alps.
Frightened of standing on its own, it clung to Russia and, as a result, drove Japan into war with Russia.
Disgusted first by the repulsive sight of Clara, Theodore Roosevelt closed all American diplomatic offices, beginning with the U.S. legation, and withdrew all diplomats.
It was a declaration that your country is no longer a state.
The world followed suit.
Let Japan take care of it, just as Grebst had predicted.
That would impose a great burden on Japan.
That, too, was the aim of Theodore, who regarded Japan as a threat.
Japan reluctantly began its rule as the Japanese Empire.
But once the Japanese accepted the responsibility, they took care of it with their characteristic seriousness.
They ended those cruel punishments, abolished the status system that had bound the people, and liberated the slaves.
Women in that country had no names.
Even Queen Min meant only “the queen of the Min clan,” not a personal name.
So Japan made them create names, but there was no such tradition.
As a result, many Japanese-style names, such as Yoshiko and Ikue, became common.
Every year Japan poured in nearly 20 percent of its national budget, laid railways in a country that had not had even a single cart, built power plants, and brought light even to the homes of former slaves.
An ancient society steeped in obstinacy and filth leapt over a thousand years and was reborn as a modern society.
But the human heart did not change.
The moment Japan was defeated in the last war, they returned to antiquity.
A Korean policeman came to the home of eleven-year-old Yoko and took everything from precious metals to her mother’s glasses.
During the repatriation, Japanese people were attacked, looted, and massacred by Koreans.
There were also bodies whose mouths had been smashed so that their gold teeth could be pulled out.
Even in Seoul, where she finally arrived, Japanese women were being attacked.
Yoko Watkins, So Far from the Bamboo Grove.
Then, following the massacre of 60,000 people on Jeju Island and the killing of 100,000 members of the Bodo League, the first wave of anti-Japanese action came with the drawing of the Syngman Rhee Line.
Around Takeshima, they called it “our sea,” and fired on and seized Japanese fishing boats.
Forty-four people were killed, and 4,000 were captured; the sight of “twenty people packed into a cell of about six tatami mats” looks exactly like the Korean prisons seen by Grebst.
Anti-Japanese sentiment intensified, and they spread around the world the comfort-women fabrication created by the Asahi Shimbun, found fault with the Rising Sun Flag on Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels, and insulted Japanese people as “monkeys,” even though they themselves resemble them far more closely.
Now they take pleasure in vandalizing and defiling Japanese shrines and temples.
America’s decapitation operation against Kim Jong-un is unavoidable.
Katsuhiro Kuroda, the Sankei Shimbun’s correspondent, points out the thinness of the sense of crisis, saying that “the Japanese school, which should become an evacuation site for Japanese residents, has been newly built on the other side of the Han River, where the bridges would be brought down.”
Then what is to be done when Seoul is attacked?
“For the time being, Japanese people too should evacuate together with Korean citizens to nearby underground shelters,” he says.
Moon Jae-in, who fought an election by dancing and singing in the same way as Asahara Shōkō, refuses even the approach of Self-Defense Force vessels coming to rescue Japanese nationals, saying that it is because “they carry the Rising Sun Flag.”
All the more so, it is absurd to think that Korean citizens who, until yesterday, were making a candlelit uproar to protect comfort-women statues would say to Japanese people, “Please come into the shelters.”
This article continues.