This essay examines claims of historical amnesia and ingratitude toward Japan by the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese Communist Party.
By tracing pre-annexation conditions, international choices, modernization policies, and postwar leadership, it argues how historical facts were concealed or altered for regime survival.

Ingratitude as Historical Amnesia — The Korean Peninsula and the CCP’s Fabrications
2017-02-14

If one were to describe Koreans in a single phrase, one could say they are an ungrateful people.
The one-party dictators of the Chinese Communist Party are no different, needless to say.
For both, the truth is that Japan is their great benefactor, a historical fact they disregard.
They conceal historical facts from their citizens and alter those facts for the sake of prolonging their own rule.
Before annexation by Japan, the Korean Peninsula was one of the poorest countries in the world and had been abandoned by the international community.
It is a historical fact that during the age of colonialism, Asia too was colonized by the great powers.
Japan not only avoided that fate, but also utterly defeated Russia—then regarded as possessing the world’s strongest army—thereby causing jubilation among Asian nations; this too is a historical fact.
After the United States judged Korea to be a hopeless country and closed its consulates and withdrew, the Korean Peninsula had only three options.
First, to become a colony of Russia.
Second, to become a vassal state of China once again.
(It is a historical fact that Japan, having defeated the Qing, compelled China in the first article of the Sino-Japanese Treaty to abolish China’s suzerainty over the Korean Peninsula—namely, to recognize its independence.)
Third, to form a union with Japan.
It is also a historical fact that the people of the Korean Peninsula chose the third option.
This was the only option even a kindergarten child would have chosen.
In the mere thirty-five years that followed, Japan invested more than twenty percent of its mainland tax revenues to rapidly modernize the peninsula, granted names to people in a country that had one of the world’s worst discriminatory systems and where many had none, liberated women who had been private property and slaves of the yangban class, and, recognizing that an independent nation required a language, unearthed Hangul and established it as the national language.
Judging by these results, the choice made by the people of the Korean Peninsula to accept annexation by Japan was correct.
Through Matsuki’s impeccable paper, people around the world also learned that my long-held assertion that Syngman Rhee was among the worst figures in history was one hundred percent correct.
Was only Syngman Rhee at fault, or is the very essence of the Korean people—historically a vassal of China—indeed composed of bottomless malice and plausible lies.
In any case, the Korean people and the one-party dictators of the Chinese Communist Party are ungrateful individuals.
By contrast, almost all Japanese never forget the favors they receive; that is the kind of people they are.
To be continued.