Originally published on February 9, 2020. This article introduces an essay by WWUK, a Korean youth living in Japan, published in the monthly magazine WiLL. It discusses South Korea’s anti-Japanese education, the radar-lock incident, the wartime labor and comfort women issues, information control under the Moon Jae-in administration, PM2.5 air pollution, and the shaking of U.S.–South Korea relations, arguing that Korea’s repeated “anti-Japan game” has reached a dead end.

February 9, 2020
The cause is said to be exhaust gases emitted by aging coal-fired power plants and manufacturing factories, as well as poorly maintained vehicles, mainly diesel vehicles.
The chapter I published on August 11, 2019, under the title “‘Criticism of Korea Is Hate Speech, Criticism of Japan Is Freedom of Expression’: Korea’s Stock Method,” entered today’s real-time top ten shortly after noon.
The emphasis within the text, other than the headings, is mine.
The following is from an essay by WWUK, a video creator, published in the May issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the titles “A Korean Youth Living in Japan Makes a Desperate Confession” and “At This Rate, Korea Will Be Abandoned.”
The radar-lock incident: the cry of a Korean youth who could no longer remain silent about the outrage committed by his motherland
Why I Started Making Videos
Nice to meet you.
I am WWUK.
At present, I have launched a channel called “WWUK TV” on YouTube and post videos every day, mainly on Korea’s political and diplomatic issues.
Why did I become interested in Japan–Korea issues and begin distributing videos?
The starting point was Japanese friends I became close to when I was a child.
When I was in junior high school and living in Australia, I became friendly with Japanese students at the school I attended.
At that time, I could not speak Japanese, but as we played together, I naturally picked it up, and gradually I began to feel that “the image of Japanese people described in Korea is completely different.”
Many people who continue to live in Korea have received a “brainwashing education” that teaches them that their motherland is always right.
Anti-Japanese education starts when they are in elementary school.
Innocent elementary school children are taught that “Dokdo（Takeshima）is Korean territory,” and when they become junior high school students, they are indoctrinated with the claim that “the military comfort women were sex slaves.”
All of it says that Korea suffered terribly during the so-called “period of Japanese rule.”
Certainly, the anti-Japanese education of elementary school days influences people both openly and subtly.
But when I was a child, I had heard a great deal about the actual conditions of that time from my grandmother, who had experienced the period of Japanese rule, so I never once thought, “I hate Japan.”
When I was in junior high school, I was driven by curiosity and wondered, “What kind of information would appear if I searched in Japanese?”
So I looked it up.
Then, a vast amount of information and material that could not be known in Korea appeared.
For me as a junior high school student, it was extremely vivid and shocking.
After that, once I graduated from junior high school, I wanted to study Japanese more, so I entered a high school in Japan.
While in high school, because of my experiences in junior high school, I began to research history on my own initiative more than ever before.
The more I researched, the more information I had never heard before overflowed, such as the fact that Japan developed the infrastructure and school system of the Korean Peninsula, and I began to feel, “I want to share this truth with many more people.”
That is why I thought I would use YouTube, where KAZUYA and others were engaged in speech activities.
At first, I posted entertainment-type videos such as “product introductions” and “Korean language lessons not found in textbooks.”
That was because I thought radical content such as “exposing the truth about Korea” would not be accepted from the beginning.
For the time being, I had decided not to touch on Japan–Korea issues.
However, the radar-lock incident went far beyond the limit.
Even though Korea is my motherland, there was no way to defend it.
I simply could not endure it, so I made a video on Korean reactions to the radar-lock incident and posted it on December 30 of last year.
Decent Young People
For young Koreans today, the idea of “anti-Japan” is, honestly, something they “do not care about.”
Everyone loves Japanese subculture, beginning with anime.
Of course, they are also interested in food culture.
Many go to Osaka as well as Shibuya and Harajuku.
That is why I even feel that there are more pro-Japanese people.
However, the voices of young Koreans do not attract attention, not only in Japan but even in Korea.
What is taken up are only the voices of some left-wing forces in their 40s to 60s.
Moreover, their voices are reported in Japan as if they were the opinions of the entire Korean people.
There is nothing sadder than this.
Movements that occur in Korea almost always involve “money.”
In particular, this time, the wartime labor issue.
In fact, at present in Korea, the remains of about one thousand people said to have been wartime laborers are said to be buried in Munhyeon-dong, Busan, where an underground torpedo base once existed, and voices demanding an excavation investigation are growing, asking, “Why did Moon Jae-in hide this?”
Furthermore, last December, 1,100 former wartime laborers sued the Korean government, arguing that, on the basis of Japan’s economic assistance under the Japan–Korea Claims Agreement of 1965, “the Korean government should compensate them.”
In Japan, people often say, “At last, the truth will be revealed,” and perhaps that is true.
However, since families and bereaved families are now claiming compensation on behalf of the persons concerned, it is simply that they want compensation money.
I do not think there is even one person who thinks, “I want to reveal the truth.”
The issue of the military comfort women is the same.
Certainly, there were women who became comfort women of their own will.
However, most of them were women who were deceived by their mothers and sold to Korean brokers.
Naturally, because the women had been lied to by their mothers, they did not realize they had been sold.
They happily followed along, thinking, “I can get a job somewhere,” and at the end of that path was a comfort station.
No matter how much they worked, the money went to their mothers, and the women themselves did not receive even a single sen.
In that case, since they do not know that they were deceived or that they were sold by their own compatriots, they think, “We were forcibly turned into sex slaves by the Japanese military,” and they demand compensation.
In Korea, sound arguments such as “If there is money to make comfort women statues, the comfort women themselves should be compensated more” are now being heard often from people in their twenties and thirties.
Regarding the radar-lock incident as well, many voices on the internet say, “This is simply too embarrassing.”
Since Korea is now moving toward “red unification” with North Korea, rumors are often heard that “President Moon Jae-in may be a spy for North Korea.”
Such “cold opinions” toward the government also firmly exist as voices of young people in Korea.
While the Moon administration claims to be “future-oriented,” it has no intention of stopping the Korean government’s specialty, the “anti-Japan game” that clings to the past.
Young people are appalled by such contradictions.
On the internet, voices are being raised saying, “This country is finished” and “This is the first time the crisis has gone this far.”
Many people must surely be thinking, “If there is time to play the anti-Japan game, rebuild the Korean economy.”
Information Control by the Moon Administration
Now, the Moon administration is trying to deceive even the Korean people.
In order to realize red unification, the government does not want to release unfavorable information.
Until now, Koreans looked at China and thought, “How pitiful, they even have internet restrictions, information control, and suppression of speech,” but ironically, they themselves are now experiencing the same thing.
The Moon administration is rapidly advancing information control.
On February 11, it became a topic of discussion that the Korean authorities had commissioned a private company to introduce software that blocks websites.
It is said that this was introduced “for the purpose of blocking illegal overseas sites,” but on March 3, Park Gwang-on, a supreme council member of the Special Committee on Countermeasures against False and Manipulated Information, who is also known for having proposed the “Historical Distortion Prohibition Act,” demanded that Google Korea delete nine videos and apologize, including videos that described comfort women as “prostitutes who received high remuneration.”
Even if it is true, this is Korea’s stock method: “Criticism of Korea is hate speech, but criticism of Japan is freedom of expression.”
＊The time has long since come for the Japanese people to realize that this Korean stock method is exactly the same as the attitude of the Asahi Shimbun and the so-called cultural figures who agree with it＊
Of the videos I know, five comfort women-related videos had been deleted.
Moreover, it was not the videos uploaded by the people who made them, but videos re-uploaded by users who liked those videos that were deleted.
What on earth does this mean?
On YouTube, the more subscribers a channel has, the more attention it attracts.
Therefore, small channels that basically do not make videos and merely watch and comment are, for better or worse, outside the field of vision of YouTube’s operators.
However, the current Korean government is carefully searching by narrowing its focus to content concerning the “military comfort women” and content that affirms the “period of Japanese rule.”
Therefore, regardless of the number of subscribers, videos are being deleted without hesitation.
As with the Historical Distortion Prohibition Act, this regulation of YouTube videos has hardly been publicly reported in Korea.
It has appeared as internet news, but it is placed somewhere that cannot be seen unless one advances about five pages, and it is hardly noticeable at all.
Present-day Korea is openly imposing news restrictions as well.
Supreme Council Member Park is not well known in Korea, and before this uproar, his name did not come up at all.
He has also posted a video on his own YouTube channel titled “Google! Respect the History of the Republic of Korea.”
His scheme to use anti-Japanese sentiment to raise his own position is completely obvious.
By standing out here, he may be aiming to become the next president.
Looking Abroad
At present, PM2.5, which also became a topic in Japan, has become a problem in Korea, and air pollution has become so serious that Seoul is said to rank first in pollution by city.
The cause is said to be exhaust gases emitted by aging coal-fired power plants and manufacturing factories, as well as poorly maintained vehicles, mainly diesel vehicles.
Including this as well, the Moon administration is all the more desperate to turn the eyes of the people toward Japan.
Therefore, the series of “anti-Japan games” that began with this radar-lock incident has become such a serious problem as a result of Korea pushing various problems onto Japan.
At this rate, Korea will be abandoned not only by Japan but by the world.
At present, Korea is in an alliance relationship with the United States.
However, if red unification（or a federal state）is realized again, the United States will certainly count Korea as a dangerous state.
Last December, the tenth meeting was held at South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense toward concluding the Special Measures Agreement on the sharing of U.S.–South Korea defense costs, to be applied from 2019.
At that meeting, the conditions asserted by U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris were “one billion dollars in contributions and a one-year term of validity for the agreement.”
He presented the term of validity, which had previously been five years, as one year.
I think this is a declaration of America’s intention, looking ahead, that “eventually we will part ways with Korea.”
Furthermore, last November he even said, “The U.S.–South Korea alliance should not be taken for granted.”
Korea wants to push America away, but it may be America that abandons Korea in the near future.
In this way, Korea is full of problems.
Therefore, in order to continue conveying the truth, I want to keep posting videos.
Also, there is one more thing: viewers often ask me, “Aren’t you going to naturalize?”
I have been thinking about naturalization since I was in high school.
It is not particularly because of this recent incident.
I simply love Japan, and I also get along well with Japanese people.
For a long time, I have wanted to live in Japan and end my life in Japan.
Now, I am preparing the documents.
There is also the fact that my safety would be in danger if I were in Korea.
A certain Korean user accused me with statements such as “Discovered a traitor YouTuber residing in Japan” and “Publishing information about a traitor YouTuber’s videos,” and there were also comments on the videos close to threats, such as “I am always watching you.”
After that, when I posted on Twitter that I had been accused and threatened, Tsukasa Jonen gave me words of encouragement, saying, “Please keep doing your best. I support you!” and even helped spread the tweet.
Of course, Korea is my motherland and my beloved homeland.
However, regarding Korea’s future, I am completely pessimistic.
Korea has mountains of domestic problems that must be solved before playing the anti-Japan game.
I want the Korean government to face these problems properly and solve them.
If Korea continues to repeat the anti-Japan game, there will be no bright future for Korea.