After first seeing Kang Sang-jung on a TV Asahi debate program, the author immediately sensed something suspicious. By later verifying his background on Wikipedia, that intuition proved correct. This essay questions why Japan’s major broadcasters promoted him so extensively and links that media environment to Japan’s long deflation and declining national power.

Anyone with true discernment should be able to see that my intuition was correct.
January 30, 2016.

I searched Wikipedia in order to confirm Kang Sang-jung’s Japanese name.

The first time I learned about him was when, during the days I was immersed in my work while living the life of a businessman, I happened to watch TV Asahi’s program Asa made Nama Terebi. The moment I saw him, I intuitively sensed something suspicious about this man, as I have already written.

If one searches for Kang Sang-jung on Wikipedia, anyone with keen insight should be able to see that my intuition was correct.

At the same time, it should also be clear how abnormal it was that, especially up until August of the year before last, TV Asahi, TBS, and NHK—astonishingly, NHK even appointed him as the host of an art program—treasured this man and frequently featured him as a commentator on their news programs, and what sort of broadcasting organizations they truly were for Japan and the Japanese people.

I am convinced that what was unfolding within real society was nothing less than a genuine thriller.

And it was precisely the open reality of such a thriller that became the cause of the long-term deflation in Japan—now reviled by countries all over the world as if it were a poisonous snake—and of the more than twenty years of decline in Japan’s national power and international credibility.

Kang Sang-jung (Korean: 강상중; English: Kang Sang-jung; born August 12, 1950) is a political scientist from Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo. His specialties are political science and the history of political thought, particularly postcolonial theory focusing on Asian regionalism and Japanese imperialism.

He is a second-generation resident ethnic Korean in Japan. His Japanese alias is Tetsuo Nagano (永野鉄男). The Japanese on-reading of “姜尚中” is Kyō Shōchū.

He was born in 1950 in Kumamoto City as a second-generation resident Korean. His father was born in 1916 in Namsan-ri, Changwon County, South Gyeongsang Province (now Uichang District, Changwon City), and in 1931 moved to Japan of his own will in search of work. His mother was born in Korea in 1923 and in 1941 crossed to Japan via the Kanpu ferry from Jinhae near Busan (now Jinhae District, Changwon City) to visit her fiancé, who would become his father.

After attending Kumamoto Prefectural Seiseikō High School, he graduated from the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University in 1974, and completed the doctoral program in political science at Waseda University Graduate School in 1979. He studied as a research student at the Faculty of Literature, University of Erlangen in West Germany (1979–1981), then served as a lecturer at Meiji Gakuin University and an associate professor at International Christian University. In 1998 he became an associate professor at the Institute of Socio-Information and Communication Studies at the University of Tokyo, and in 2004 a professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies (affiliation: Institute of Socio-Information and Communication Studies, Information Behavior Division). In 2010, he became a professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies as well as director of the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies.

He initially used his Japanese name “Tetsuo Nagano,” but while attending Waseda University he joined a Korean culture research group, and after visiting South Korea in 1972, he began using his Korean name.

At a poetry gathering held in 2011, Kang spoke about his background, saying, “I was born in Kumamoto and my real name is Tetsuo Nagano. But thirty-eight years ago, when I was twenty-two, for personal reasons I began calling myself Kang Sang-jung.” (From Wikipedia)

To be continued.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1cstF9s2uyI