Published on November 10, 2019. This is a continuation of Edward Luttwak’s essay “South Korea, Learn the Truth of History: The Four Choices for the Korean Peninsula,” published in the monthly magazine Hanada’s special feature “Moon Jae-in’s Total Collapse.” The essay argues that the essence of Japan-South Korea relations is not diplomacy, but the need for Koreans themselves to undertake an “agonizing reappraisal” by facing the historical facts of collaboration with Japan and the conduct of their grandfathers’ generation, while proposing a serious official historical research project by the Japanese government.

November 10, 2019.
To put it in simple words, it means “facing directly the image and position of oneself that one does not want to acknowledge.”
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
The duty of agonizing reappraisal.
Of course, even within South Korea, there are probably people who want to stop this movement toward China.
That, in itself, is a wonderful thing.
However, if they truly want to stop the breakaway from the United States and Japan and the subordination to China, Koreans must change their attitude toward historical issues into the kind of attitude France showed toward Germany.
A few years after the war ended, France had already changed its attitude to “Let us forget the past and live for the future.”
During the war in France, a very large number of ordinary people were made to work semi-forcibly in German munitions factories.
The present French government does not raise its voice to condemn Germany and demand compensation for French people who encountered such misfortunes in the past.
What Germany actually did to France was far harsher than what Japan did on the Korean Peninsula.
It took people walking on the road and made them work.
The Germans expelled French people, shot them, and took from within France treasures amounting to thirty thousand horse-drawn carriages.
They looted every kind of property, from wheat to mineral resources, from works of art to trucks.
Moreover, Germany did not build schools in France.
By contrast, Japan developed the infrastructure of the Korean Peninsula and built Keijō Imperial University and many schools.
And yet, in 2019, if someone in France publicly demands compensation from Germany, that person comes to be treated as an eccentric.
A great many things can be seen from this situation.
Japanese diplomats made every possible effort to improve relations with South Korea.
In order to resolve the historical issues between the two countries, they carried out their duties with great effort.
However, all those efforts were in vain.
Why is that?
It is because nothing can begin unless the South Korean side undertakes an “agonizing reappraisal.”
To put this in simple words, it means “facing directly the image and position of oneself that one does not want to acknowledge.”
This is an extremely painful task, but unless South Korea itself begins this process, Japan-South Korea relations will not change at all.
South Korea has demanded that the Japanese face the truth of history, but in fact, it is they who cannot solve the problem unless they face history directly.
In other words, Koreans must learn the truth of history and face the past by conversing with the memories of the generation of fathers who are still alive and with the records of the grandfathers who have died.
Only there can they finally get on the right track.
Like Koreans, the Dutch failed to make the effort of “agonizing reappraisal,” and as a result, they came to carry weakness in the depths of their psychology.
On the surface, the feeling of resistance toward Germans disappeared from the Dutch in about thirty years.
They did not make an uproar for more than seventy years as South Korea has done.
However, even though open antipathy toward Germany disappeared, the problem has continued to remain in the Dutch heart like smoldering embers.
For example, the actions of collaborators with Germany are still being discovered one after another from documentary records, confirming them as historical facts.
Face historical facts directly.
My analysis above may seem to have nothing to do with Japan-South Korea relations and to present no solution for the future.
However, as the historical issues of Europe suggest, I believe there is also a concrete solution on the Japanese side.
That is for the Japanese government to fund a genuine official project that seriously researches the truth of modern and contemporary history related to Japan and South Korea.
Even busy diplomats know that historical facts have a major impact on their work.
The only way to solve the problem is, through research and investigation, to bring to light the true shape of the history of Japan-South Korea relations that has become the issue at hand.
The process of “agonizing reappraisal” is truly difficult, but in the Netherlands it finally began in the latter half of the 1960s, and even within the Netherlands a historical view different from the official view came to emerge.
It began with the concrete emergence of one episode after another showing the truth of history.
According to the official view, “the Resistance had been carried out on a large scale,” but as time passed, concrete examples denying this came out one after another.
Cases such as people working for Germany and stealing for Germany were documented and accumulated as research papers.
That became “the weight of history” and came to overturn the lies of the conventional government view.
In South Korea as well, a concrete examination of such cooperation with Japan is necessary, but at the same time, it is also important to accumulate the facts of how greatly Japan contributed to the development and advancement of the Korean Peninsula.
That is because Japan modernized infrastructure, the economy, education, the judiciary, and indeed a wide variety of systems.
As stated earlier, Japan built numerous educational institutions on the Korean Peninsula.
It is well known even in Japan that the predecessor of Seoul National University was Keijō Imperial University.
By clarifying one by one from the records the facts of Japan’s contributions and Koreans’ cooperation with Japan, and by accumulating them, it is possible to expose the lie of the official “history of resistance” and make Koreans face the truth of history directly.
It would be all right to begin with a case such as Park Chung-hee.
He was not a slave of Japan.
Koreans should become aware of the fact that he cooperated precisely because he recognized Japan’s achievements in devoting itself to the development of the Korean Peninsula.
Of course, there were also those who cooperated with Japan simply because they were corrupt, and there must also have been a psychology of subordination to the strong.
Even so, many people cooperated positively precisely because they believed that Japan was actually developing Korean society.
Up to this point, I have analyzed the Korean problem from the perspective of comparative history.
If an organization such as the historical investigation committee proposed in this essay is created, I, as someone in a neutral position, may serve as its chair.