Published on September 8, 2019.
This article introduces an essay by Matsumoto Koji published in the September issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, examining the background of Korean anti-Japanese ideology, the continuity of administration, law, and institutions from the period of Japanese rule, and the reality that Korean policies and laws were often created by using Japanese materials as models.
Through comparisons with Taiwan, restrictions on Japanese culture, and the formation of Korean government systems, it examines the contradiction between Korea’s outward anti-Japanese stance and its actual imitation of Japan.

September 8, 2019.
When creating something new, it had become customary for Korea to send an investigative delegation to Japan, look into various matters, and then turn what it found into a new Korean policy or law.
The following is from an essay by Matsumoto Koji, published in the September issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the title: “Stand Up to Korea’s Lies: Why Does Korea Continue Its ‘Anti-Japanese’ Stance? Confront It with the Truth of History and Expose Korea’s Fiction.”
It is an essay that must be read not only by the Japanese people but also by people all over the world.
Unless one reads this essay, one cannot understand the postwar history of the Far East at all.
Alexis Dudden, who is an agent of Korea and a person of unbelievably poor and low intelligence, dominates the American historical association.
The same is true of the United Nations.
The time has long since come for the international community to recognize its own ignorance and low intelligence and feel ashamed.
Above all, Korea, a country of bottomless evil and plausible lies, has done this for the 74 years since the war, and China began it under Jiang Zemin in order to divert the eyes of the people from the Tiananmen Square Incident, and continues it even now.
The fact that the international community has overlooked Nazism in the name of anti-Japanese education has created the extremely unstable and dangerous world of today.
China’s arrogance, Korea’s madness, or the madness of the Korean Peninsula, and Putin’s arrogance are all the result of the international community’s continuing to leave untouched the Nazism that China and the Korean Peninsula have continued to practice.
Taiwan Is Pro-Japanese, Korea Is Anti-Japanese?
—The Origins of Korean “Anti-Japanese Ideology,” published this March by Soshisha, is a major work of 650 pages, and with its extremely rich notes, quotations, and references, it is also a powerful work that persuasively conveys the background and reality of Korea’s “anti-Japanese” stance.
First, could you tell us what motivated you to write this book?
Editor’s note: The bold passages in the text are quotations from The Origins of Korean “Anti-Japanese Ideology.”
Matsumoto.
In 1982, I was posted from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, to the Embassy of Japan in Korea, and I was in Korea for about three years.
During that time, I always felt that something was strange.
To give one example, at that time Japanese popular culture was subject to restrictions, and the import of Japanese films and records was effectively prohibited.
In music, songs such as popular Japanese songs and enka, which had a particularly strong Japanese cultural color, were targeted.
When I asked the reason for this, I was told that we Koreans had suffered terribly under Japanese rule in the past, and therefore had feelings of aversion and repulsion toward anything Japanese.
But when one thinks about it, is that not a little strange?
If they disliked Japanese culture so much, there would be no need for the government to regulate it.
No one would go to see Japanese films, and no one would feel like listening to Japanese music.
In fact, there is an interesting example in Taiwan.
After Japan’s defeat in the war, the Chiang Kai-shek government of the Kuomintang, which came to Taiwan, also adopted a policy of rejecting Japanese culture.
However, there was a period when it permitted the import of Japanese films.
As a result, Shintoho’s Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War, released in Japan in 1957, was shown, and it is said that when the scene appeared in which Emperor Meiji, played by Arashi Kanjuro, came on screen, the audience all stood up at once.
That became a major problem, and the import of Japanese films was once again prohibited.
Perhaps the Korean government feared that something similar might occur.
People often say, do they not, that although both were under Japanese rule, Taiwan is pro-Japanese while Korea is anti-Japanese, and wonder why that is so.
However, I thought that the underlying consciousness toward Japan might be surprisingly similar to that of Taiwan.
This was already more than thirty years ago, but contrary to the “official perception,” perhaps Koreans did not truly reject the period of Japanese rule, or Japanese culture, or things Japanese, in their hearts.
A sense of the problem began to grow in me: what on earth does this mean?
This was not limited to culture in the narrow sense.
When I walked around the streets, the atmosphere was very similar to Japan.
The scale was smaller, but underground shopping streets, for example, were not very different from those in Japan.
Moreover, the government offices were almost exactly the same.
Since I was posted there in charge of economic affairs, my counterpart was Korea’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which corresponded to Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and from the office layout to the arrangement of the desks, it was almost the same as MITI.
When one thinks about it, that too is natural.
The Korean government took over from the Government-General of Korea under Japanese rule, and although officials from the Japanese mainland left, the Korean officials who had made up roughly half of the bureaucracy remained there as they were.
That organization became the Korean government after passing through the United States Army Military Government in Korea.
In other words, the institutions and the people had continued all the way from the period of the Government-General of Korea.
Because the administrative culture under Japanese rule, the overall framework of the organization, the arrangement of sections, and so on were carried over from earlier times, it was only natural that they resembled Japan.
“Japanese society across a single stretch of sea was always like a model answer sheet, and Koreans copied it furiously.”
Kim Si-bok.
1981.
“The general shape of Korea’s politics, society, and culture has proceeded in a form that imitates Japanese customs.”
Choi Il-nam.
1994.
To speak more concretely, at the time when I was posted there, the internal organizations of Japan’s MITI and Korea’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry had many names that were very similar.
For example, MITI had bureaus called the Basic Industries Bureau and the Consumer Goods Industries Bureau.
In the early 1980s, there was an organizational reform of MITI, and although originally there had been no terms such as basic industry or consumer goods industry, bureaus with such names were created with considerable effort.
Then, immediately afterward, the organization of Korea’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry was also reformed, and bureaus with similar names, such as the Basic Industries Bureau and the Consumer Goods Industries Bureau, were created.
Also, there are public corporations everywhere that have functions very similar to those in Japan.
When some new administrative demand arises, Korea first investigates what Japan is doing and then creates a public corporation.
Therefore, when someone from one of these Korean corporations came to us bureaucrats, simply by hearing the name, we could generally tell what kind of institution it was.
If someone came from the Small and Medium Business Bank, we would think that, in short, it must be something like the Small Business Finance Corporation, and almost without fail that was exactly what it was.
“Is there no Japanese material?”
I do not quite know how things are now, but as far as I investigated from the 1980s through the 1990s, the wording of legal provisions was also extremely similar.
For example, let us compare Japan’s Labor Union Act, amended in 1949, with Korea’s Labor Union Act, enacted four years later in 1953.
◆In this Act, a labor union means an organization, or a federation thereof, formed voluntarily and independently by workers as its principal purpose to maintain and improve working conditions and to improve their economic status.
In this Act, a worker means a person who lives on wages, salaries, or other equivalent income, regardless of the dignity or type of occupation.
Japan.
◆In this Act, a labor union means an organization, or a federation thereof, formed by workers as the main body, voluntarily and independently, for the purpose of maintaining and improving working conditions, promoting the welfare of workers, and improving their economic and social status.
In this Act, a worker means a person who lives on wages, salaries, or other equivalent income, regardless of the type of occupation.
Korea.
The Korean version is a little longer, but it is very similar.
Next, the first article, “Purpose,” of Japan’s Temporary Measures Act for the Promotion of the Electronics Industry, enacted in 19573, and Korea’s Electronics Industry Promotion Act, enacted in 1969, is almost identical in wording.
◆The purpose of this Act is, by promoting the electronics industry, to contribute to the modernization of industrial equipment and technology and to the sound development of the national economy.
Japan.
◆The purpose of this Act is, by promoting the electronics industry, to contribute to the modernization of industrial equipment and technology and to the development of the national economy.
Korea.
I cannot quote all the legal provisions, but in short, many Korean laws have aspects that are like translations of Japanese laws.
Such similarities cannot occur by coincidence.
As something like a standard practice, the phrase “Japanese materials” was often used in Korea at that time.
When officials considered policy in a government office and a proposal came up from below, the bureau chief would ask, “I understand that, but is there no Japanese material?”
When drafting and legislating a new policy or law, the people above always demanded Japanese materials.
Perhaps they felt reassured if it followed those materials.
When creating something new, it had become customary for Korea to send an investigative delegation to Japan, look into various matters, and then turn what it found into a new Korean policy or law.
One reason why this happened was that in Korea, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, laws from the period of Japanese rule were applied by transfer.
“Iyo,” or transferred application, is a legal term, and in short it means regarding a foreign law as one’s own national law and applying it as it is.
Of course, among young legal professionals there were also people who could not read Japanese, so translations were made as well.
Because basic laws such as criminal law, civil law, and commercial law had been inherited from the period of Japanese rule, Japan’s new postwar legislation also fit Korean society very well.
Korean history textbooks say things such as, “Japanese policies placed enormous obstacles in the way of Korea’s modernization and development and were of no use whatsoever to our people,” but I think you can see from this as well that such a perception is completely detached from reality.
It was President Park Chung-hee who put an end to “transferred application” and switched to Korea’s own laws, but even after that, Japanese laws continued to be received.
“Reception” means developing laws based on previous laws, and although uniquely Korean provisions such as the crime of adultery were established, fundamentally the legal structure from the period of Japanese rule slid over almost exactly as it was.
I think that has not changed very much even now.
Perhaps, with regard to the structure of streets and underground shopping areas as well, if specialists in architecture or urban engineering were to look at them, they could give an analytical explanation such as: this part of Japan was incorporated in this way.
Why is a country that is anti-Japanese so similar to Japan?
Moreover, this is not something in the nature of old systems or relics that have simply remained.
Even after the war, it has consistently and greedily tried to take Japan into itself.
Is what it says with its mouth not different from what it actually does?
Something is strange.
I felt that there must be something large that has not been spoken of.
This article continues.