Published on September 11, 2019.
As a continuation of Matsumoto Koji’s essay published in the September issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, this article discusses how Korea’s anti-Japanese policy and anti-Japanese education were formed not merely as emotion but as an ideology for national integration, and how this ideology has run out of control through generational change.
Through Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, the comfort women issue, the forced labor issue, the name of the Sea of Japan, and the Rising Sun Flag issue, it examines the nature and future danger of Korean anti-Japanese ideology.

September 11, 2019.
On the other hand, what about Korea?
Anti-Japanese education continues steadily even now.
National consciousness is only becoming more radical, and it is difficult to believe that unification would put a brake on it.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
Anti-Japanese Sentiment Is an Ideology.
The first president of Korea, Syngman Rhee, certainly implemented anti-Japanese policies.
Partly because he returned to Korea aboard a military aircraft from victorious America, he robustly carried out various anti-Japanese actions, such as demanding that Tsushima be returned and drawing what was called the Syngman Rhee Line on the high seas and seizing Japanese fishing boats.
However, I think it was President Park Chung-hee, who graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and reached the end of the war as a lieutenant in the Manchukuo Army, who solidified the people’s anti-Japanese consciousness.
In the early 1960s, the people had become deeply weary of continuing political confusion and corruption and economic stagnation, and an atmosphere had spread in which the prewar period was nostalgically remembered as “the good old days.”
Park Chung-hee was a man who admired patriots of the Meiji Restoration such as Yoshida Shoin, enjoyed shigin, and possessed an inner world like that of a Japanese person, but he probably concluded that in order to unite a people who had lost their foothold, there was no choice but to proclaim nationalism with anti-Japanese sentiment at its core.
He preached the necessity of a “Korean historical view,” built shrines to Yi Sun-sin and a memorial hall for the righteous patriot Ahn Jung-geun, created the framework of the Japanese culture restrictions that still continue today, and put an end to the lax, continuing transferred application of Japanese law.
This means that he created the foundation of an anti-Japanese country, but the story did not end there.
People say this sort of thing about the relationship between alcohol and the drinker.
At first, the person drinks the alcohol; then the alcohol drinks the alcohol; finally, the alcohol drinks the person.
The relationship between the state and anti-Japanese sentiment also changed in this way.
I must leave the details to my book, but what lies at the root of anti-Japanese sentiment is not emotion but ideology.
Originally, it was something close to a kind of national agreement for uniting a people without a firm foundation, and I think President Park, of course, and also the first generation of citizens who had experienced Japanese rule, understood this very well.
However, as time passed, generational change advanced, and the people of the generation that had actually experienced Japanese rule gradually disappeared.
Along with this, the sense that “this is the official story, but in reality it was like this” was gradually lost from this country.
As the education that had long continued dyed the consciousness of the people entirely in anti-Japanese colors, an age arrived in which the ideology began to move on its own.
Around the time I was posted to Korea, the four-billion-dollar economic cooperation issue was causing tension between the two countries.
The argument was that Japan was spared the threat of communism thanks to Korea’s national defense efforts, and therefore Japan should bear an appropriate share of those expenses and pay Korea four billion dollars.
For Japan, this came completely out of the blue, and there was an uproar over why such a thing had suddenly appeared at that point.
After that, the fingerprinting issue arose, as did the comfort women issue, the name of the Sea of Japan, the Rising Sun Flag, and the recent so-called “forced labor” issue.
Again and again, issues were suddenly raised by the Korean side in places where things had previously been calm, and friction arose.
One could call it an age in which the magma of anti-Japanese sentiment, so to speak, erupted from various places in search of outlets.
But now, yet another new aspect is emerging.
I get the impression that an ideology originally fabricated for the integration of the people is now entangling the entire country.
Anti-Japanese sentiment is like a runaway locomotive, and the present situation, I think, is not only that no one can control it, but that neither the government nor the people can jump off it.
This must be called a worrying situation for Japan.
People often say that if the North absorbs Korea, the military demarcation line will come down close to Tsushima.
If that happens, it will certainly be a major threat, but if the reverse happens, that is, if Korea absorbs the North, would it not be so serious?
I somehow feel that one cannot say so with confidence.
The North is a totalitarian country, but at least it is not anti-Japanese in principle.
Because it is capable, in its own way, of calculating national interests, I think it can understand the meaning of the geopolitical condition that its country lies between China and Japan.
It is difficult to imagine that it would become a friendly country toward Japan, but I think there is a sufficient possibility that it would judge it advantageous to balance itself between China and Japan.
On the other hand, what about Korea?
Anti-Japanese education continues steadily even now.
National consciousness is only becoming more radical, and it is difficult to believe that unification would put a brake on it.
In Japan, one often sees optimistic arguments saying that more than seven million Korean tourists come to Japan annually, but such things have nothing to do with the essence of the problem.
There were people who once explained that because Kim Jong-un had studied in Switzerland, he would probably have some understanding of human rights and democracy, but this is the same sort of thing; perhaps the desire to feel reassured comes first.
The closest historical parallel to Korean anti-Japanese ideology is the Nazi Party’s anti-Semitism.
When an ideology that regards one ethnic group as absolute evil in its entirety combines with the legitimate consciousness of the state, what will happen?
I think the Japanese people must think about this a little more seriously.
—You mean that Korea may be more dangerous.
Matsumoto.
It is a problem I do not even want to think about very much, but it is necessary to have a clear recognition of the abnormality of the national psychology that now covers Korea.
Of course, danger is not imminent right now, and at least present-day Korea does not have the power to start something on its own.
However, when the restraints of the international order, beginning with the United Nations, come loose, and things like clashes between ethnic groups begin to become normal in various parts of the world, it is impossible to know what an anti-Japanese country in possession of a “national nuclear weapon” would think.
This article continues.