This essay examines the background of contemporary Korean perceptions of Japan through events of the Rhee Syngman era and issues in historical education.
It explores the structure of historical narratives and propaganda in postwar East Asia.

2019-01-18
The massacres continued thereafter, and the island’s population sharply declined.
Although smaller in scale, similar massacres were carried out in other regions as well.

The chapter I published on 2018-12-05, titled “What Is Happening in Korea Today Can Only Be Understood by Knowing These Facts,” has entered the top 30 in Ameba search rankings.
Shocked and appalled by the behavior of President Lee Myung-bak in the final phase of his administration, I began to wonder what kind of country Korea really was, and searched the internet about Korea and the Korean Peninsula… within one hour, I understood the reality of the peninsula.
Having been a reader of the Asahi Shimbun and educated under postwar education, I had never understood the true state of Korea until then.
As for North Korea, without even searching, anyone can understand that it is a country beyond description in its severity.
Just now, I discovered another article that represents the essence of the internet, the greatest library in human history.
What is happening in Korea today can only be understood by first knowing these facts.
In other words, without knowing these facts, one cannot understand the Korean people… and for the Japanese, that is extremely dangerous.
Just as I personally encountered evil severe enough to bring me to the brink of death from illness, in reality Japan has continued to encounter this same evil… and has been continuously exposed to it.
Not only toward Japan, but they have continued to spread this influence with the United States and the United Nations as their primary arenas.
The truth revealed by this work is the true nature of anti-Japan propaganda.
As a matter of divine providence, Japan—together with the United States, a nation where the Turntable of Civilization is turning—must lead the world.
Yet the world has overlooked for seventy years the fact that countries such as those on the Korean Peninsula and China have continued anti-Japan education, a form of Nazism, under the name of postwar education.
The time has long come to recognize that divine anger at this situation has kept the world unstable and full of conflict.
That I have appeared, reluctantly, carrying the Turntable of Civilization—this was, for Japan and for the world, far more important than either I or my readers could have imagined.
Below is the article I discovered.

It was after reading Korean history textbooks.
Japanese people were portrayed as cold-blooded “devils.”
Modern Japan was depicted as having done nothing but “massacre and plunder” Korea.

◆Why Did Korea Rewrite History? — Considering the Motives and Background (Part 2) Takaki Yamada
The Rhee Syngman era that marked the true beginning of Korea’s misfortune
Now, let us return to the main subject.
With Japan’s defeat, governance of Korea passed from the Government-General to the United States.
At first, various factions clashed over nation-building, and the Soviet Union quickly installed a puppet.
Although the provisional government and independence army were not recognized, Rhee Syngman himself, coming from that provisional government and having studied in the United States while lobbying there, was ultimately elevated as head of an anti-communist puppet regime.
However, his self-serving demand that “Korea be added to the Allied Powers” was rejected.
It was considered that those who had not fought and shed blood had no right to assert themselves.
Thus, for Koreans to call themselves a “victorious nation” or “Allied nation” is simply contrary to fact.
One cannot help but feel sympathy regarding this man’s seizure of dictatorial power as the first president.
The period from Rhee’s return to Korea until his exile was a “dark age,” and it is abnormal that this memory is absent among modern Koreans.
In many ways, Rhee Syngman was the root of all evils, and his era was precisely what Korean history education portrays as “Japanese imperial rule.”
The first major crime committed by Rhee was the “Jeju Island incident,” essentially a massacre of islanders suspected of being communists.
As a result, tens of thousands of citizens were killed, and many others fled to Japan and settled there permanently.
The massacres continued thereafter, and the island population sharply declined.
Although smaller in scale, similar massacres occurred in other regions.
As for Rhee’s anti-Japan crimes, the invasion and seizure of Takeshima and the killing of Japanese fishermen are well known, but in fact he had earlier attempted to invade Tsushima.
Troops had been concentrated at the southern tip of Korea for that purpose when North Korea launched its lightning invasion.
Given that he did not hesitate to massacre his own citizens, it is not difficult to imagine that the Korean military might have committed similar massacres on Tsushima.
To be continued.