2018-10-26
Every part of this essay except the heading must be emphasized.
This is a historic piece of writing.
A friend who is an exceptionally well-read person brought me this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho.
I was astonished when I read the following essay by Masayuki Takayama.
Masayuki Takayama and I are in resonance with one another.
Every part of this essay except the heading must be emphasized.
This is a historic piece of writing.
The Crimes of the Asahi Shimbun
After Japanese imperial rule ended, North Korea took the northern half of the peninsula.
It was a good choice: Japan had located heavy industries such as steelmaking in the north and had built the Sup’ung Dam, one of the largest in the world, on the Yalu River.
Kim Il Sung could have kept the national finances in surplus simply by making use of those assets, yet he foolishly started the Korean War.
The North Korean army was driven back by U.S. forces, most of the factories imperial Japan had gone to the trouble of building were destroyed, and 1.3 million people were killed.
After the armistice, Kim Il Sung launched the even more foolish “Chollima Movement,” ordering the doubling of both rice and steel production.
But the workers had died in the war.
Where was he to find the additional manpower?
As if in response, the Asahi Shimbun launched a campaign targeting Koreans living in Japan, proclaiming that “North Korea is a paradise on earth.”
Correspondent Hiroshi Iwadare sent back reports from this paradise, writing that “the factories are full of vitality, and people’s livelihoods are guaranteed.”
The reporting that portrayed the North as a paradise continued for nearly twenty years, and Sayuri Yoshinaga, too, encouraged repatriation to the North in the film Foundry Town.
As a result, ninety thousand Koreans living in Japan returned to their homeland, unaware that it was hell.
The North’s labor shortage was resolved.
Around that time, Kim Jong Il began abducting Japanese people.
Japanese people were highly trusted.
They could travel anywhere in the world.
Then why not have operatives pose as Japanese and carry out acts of terrorism?
If the terrorism succeeded, Japan would be condemned, while Kim Jong Il could sit back and laugh.
In fact, in 1987, Kim Hyon Hui, using the name Mayumi Hachiya, blew up a Korean Air aircraft in midair.
But “Mayumi” was captured, exposing the operation to “commit terrorism while posing as Japanese,” and it also began to emerge that many Japanese people had been abducted in preparation for it.
When the North’s position became precarious, the Asahi acted again.
Takashi Uemura portrayed Kim Hak-sun, who had been sold to a procurer, as “a comfort woman forcibly taken away by the Japanese military” and published an article about her.
It followed this by having Chuo University professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi speak of “military involvement in the comfort women system,” and raised an outcry that this was a crime committed by the state.
Kiichi Miyazawa was startled, shelved efforts to pursue the abduction issue, and shifted toward good-neighbor diplomacy.
The Asahi had Yasuhiko Yoshida and others proclaim, “The North would never abduct anyone” and “Kim Hak-sun rather than Kim Hyon Hui.”
Yet it became increasingly impossible to deny that thirteen-year-old Megumi Yokota had been abducted.
At the Red Cross talks that served as the channel for negotiations, whenever abductions were mentioned, “the North stormed out” (Asahi Shimbun), refusing to discuss the matter.
The Asahi lectured an increasingly frustrated Japanese public in an editorial that “suspicions of abduction are nothing more than an obstacle to the normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea,” admonishing them not to harbor unnecessary suspicions.
Former Asahi journalist Yayori Matsui also organized the “Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal,” loudly insisting that Japanese people should seriously consider the concrete issue of comfort women rather than the abduction issue, which amounted merely to suspicions.
A Korean who had supported the tribunal was later found to be a North Korean operative.
After ten years of diverting attention from abductions to comfort women, Kim Jong Il readily admitted the abductions.
The Japanese people had unquestionably missed their moment to express their anger.
The third-generation leader, Kim Jong Un, killed his uncle and his brother, then declared, “I will turn both Tokyo and New York into a sea of fire,” conducted nuclear tests, and launched ICBMs one after another.
When Japanese people began thinking seriously about national security, the Asahi appeared again.
“After Mrs. Akie Abe gave a speech at Kagoike’s school, the Ministry of Finance granted a discount.”
“A friend of the prime minister established a veterinary school in a field that had been restricted for half a century.”
This newspaper had told its readers not to believe the abduction allegations, despite all the evidence supporting them.
With the Moritomo and Kake controversies, however, the Asahi changed its tune: there was no evidence whatsoever, but suspicion was enough.
Foolish television broadcasters and the Diet spent a year and a half making a fuss over Moritomo and Kake, leaving the nation’s security by the wayside.
As a result, the prospect of “Japanese people who were serious”—which the North had feared—faded away.
Why does the Asahi act in North Korea’s favor every time?
By the standards applied in the Moritomo and Kake controversies, there are more than sufficient grounds to suspect that the Asahi sent Koreans living in Japan back to serve the North and obstructed investigations into the abductions of Japanese people.
Come to think of it, the Asahi’s Hanshin bureau was attacked on Constitution Memorial Day in the same year as the Korean Air bombing.
Ever since, the Asahi has cast itself as a martyr that shed blood in defense of the Constitution and has denounced constitutional revision.
But in light of the relationship between the two, does that incident not begin to look like a favor performed by the North for the Asahi Shimbun in return for its services?