This article examines the false claims spread in Korea that Japan “seized 40 percent of Korean land” and that Japanese people took food from Korea.
It also criticizes the depictions of Japanese military massacres of Koreans in the novel Arirang as malicious fabrications unsupported by historical fact.

November 15, 2019.
The book also exposes the lie taught in Korean textbooks that Japan “seized 40 percent of Korea’s land,” as well as the false claim that Japanese people took food from Korea.
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
Was there any rational reason for it?
It is said that the twelve-volume epic novel Arirang, which sold a total of 3.5 million copies, contains several scenes of land surveys.
In one such scene, a police officer at a local police station conducting the survey rejects the protest of a farmer whose land is being taken, ties him to a tree trunk, and shoots him dead.
The scenes of massacres of Koreans by the Japanese military depicted in the novel Arirang are the height of absurdity.
Arirang wrote that 1,000 Korean laborers were massacred at a civil-engineering worksite for the defense of the Kuril Islands, which were Japanese territory at the time.
It also wrote that, when the construction was completed, the Japanese military “shut the Korean laborers inside an air-raid shelter,” “threw hand grenades into it for ten minutes, and then added machine-gun fire, killing them all,” and that, in addition, the Japanese military killed more than 4,000 people by similar methods.
It is a scene that calls to mind the preposterous film Battleship Island.
The malicious idea that the Japanese exterminated Koreans is exactly the same.
As a result of his investigation, Mr. Lee concludes that “this horrific massacre was not a fact,” and asks whether there was any rational reason, during wartime labor shortages, to massacre valuable personnel who had finally been secured.
Moreover, he suspects that Cho Jung-rae, the author of Arirang, is the one who may be “possessed by the madness of massacre.”
The book also exposes the lie taught in Korean textbooks that Japan “seized 40 percent of Korea’s land,” as well as the false claim that Japanese people took food from Korea.
Kim Nak-nyeon, a co-author and professor in the Department of Economics at Dongguk University, introduces an article from the Dong-A Ilbo dated June 16, 1931.
The article reported as follows concerning information that, in that year, when both Japan and Korea had abundant harvests, imports — or transfers — of rice from the Korean Peninsula to Japan would be restricted because of a tendency toward oversupply of rice.
“From the standpoint of Korean farmers, it is only natural that they must absolutely oppose not only restrictions on transfer through the enactment of a law, but also any measures that would restrain the freedom of the outflow of Korean rice.”
In other words, Japanese people did not take rice.
Rather, Korean farmers were eager to export rice.
This article continues.