2019-09-11

This article examines an argument presented by Koji Matsumoto in the September issue of the monthly magazine WiLL concerning the historical formation of anti-Japanese ideology in South Korea. It focuses on Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, the construction of a state-centered historical narrative, and restrictions on Japanese culture, arguing that anti-Japanese sentiment developed from political ideology into a self-perpetuating force.

The following is from a paper by Koji Matsumoto published in the September issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the title, “Confront Korean Lies: Why Does Korea Continue to Be Anti-Japanese? Discover the Historical Truth and Expose Korean Fabrications.”
It is a paper that should be read not only by Japanese citizens but also by people throughout the world.
Without examining arguments such as this, it is impossible to understand the postwar history of the Far East in its entirety.
Alexis Dudden and others whose understanding of Japan and Korea I regard as profoundly misguided have exercised considerable influence within the American historical establishment.
The same problem can be seen at the United Nations.
The time has come for the international community to recognize the extent of the ignorance and intellectual failure that it has allowed to persist.
Above all, there are South Korea and China, where, in my view, grave distortions of history and plausible falsehoods concerning Japan have repeatedly been propagated.
In South Korea, anti-Japanese ideology continued throughout the decades following the war.
In China, Jiang Zemin intensified anti-Japanese education as part of an effort to redirect public attention after the Tiananmen Square incident.
The international community’s failure to confront what I regard as an ideological form of anti-Japanese indoctrination has contributed to the creation of an increasingly unstable and dangerous world.
China’s growing assertiveness, the extreme manifestations of anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea and on the Korean Peninsula, and Russia’s growing assertiveness under Putin are, in my view, all consequences of an international community that has too often failed to confront aggressive nationalism and ideological distortion.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Anti-Japanese Sentiment Is an Ideology
South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, did indeed pursue an explicitly anti-Japanese policy.
After returning to Korea from the victorious United States aboard a military aircraft, he demanded that Japan hand over Tsushima.
He later unilaterally established the Syngman Rhee Line on the high seas and seized Japanese fishing vessels.
He vigorously pursued a wide range of anti-Japanese policies.
Park Chung-hee, however, was a different kind of figure.
He had received military training under Japanese rule and ended the war as an officer in the Manchurian military establishment.
By the beginning of the 1960s, South Korea was suffering from prolonged political turmoil, corruption, and economic stagnation.
Against this background, a mood began to spread among some people in which the prewar period was remembered as “the good old days.”
Park Chung-hee was a man whose inner world had been deeply influenced by Japan.
He respected leading figures associated with the Meiji Restoration, including Yoshida Shōin, and had an appreciation for poetry.
Yet in order to unite the people of a state that lacked a sufficiently strong common political and historical foundation, he appears to have concluded that nationalism centered on anti-Japanese sentiment was the only force capable of binding the country together.
He emphasized the need to establish a distinct “Korean history.”
He built shrines and memorial facilities dedicated to Yi Sun-sin and An Jung-geun.
He also created the framework for restrictions on Japanese culture that would continue for many years and sought to eliminate the remaining influence of Japanese institutions and law.
This became one of the foundations of postwar anti-Japanese ideology.
But the story did not end there.
The relationship resembles an old saying about alcohol and the drinker.
At first, a person drinks alcohol.
Then alcohol drinks alcohol.
Finally, alcohol drinks the person.
The relationship between the South Korean state and anti-Japanese ideology developed in much the same way.
I must leave the details to my book, but what lies at the root of anti-Japanese sentiment is not merely emotion.
It is an ideology.
It functioned as a kind of national compact designed to unite a population that otherwise lacked a sufficiently strong common foundation.
Park Chung-hee, like the first generation of Koreans who had personally experienced Japanese rule, understood this distinction.
Those who had lived through that period could distinguish between the official narrative and their own memories of what had actually occurred.
They could think, “Officially, we are told that things were like this, but in reality, they were like that.”
However, as generations changed, the number of people who had personally experienced the period of Japanese rule steadily declined.
At the same time, the distinction between official ideology and personal memory gradually disappeared from South Korean society.
As decades of education increasingly colored public consciousness in anti-Japanese terms, the time eventually came when the ideology began to exercise a power of its own.
This article continues.