뉴스레터

"We have been defeated, but Joseon has not won. I guarantee that it will take much longer than a century for the people of Joseon to come to their senses and restore the glory Joseon once possessed. We Japanese have ingrained upon the people of Joseon colonial education that is more fearsome than guns and cannons. They will end up turning against one another and live like slaves. Wait and see! Joseon once was glorious and great, but the present Joseon will become prey to colonial education. And I, Abe Nobuyuki will return."

On August 15, 1945, the day the people of Joseon were finally able to rejoice over their liberation after being forced down a path of slavery since 1905 when the Joseon dynasty was threatened into entering the illegal Ulsa Treaty. Not many will be able to remember the above horrendous curse made at the time by Abe Nobuyuki, the Japanese empire’s last governor-general of Korea. The reason for reminding readers about that particular curse from seven decades ago is because of a foreboding that if we don’t pay attention, that awful curse may end up not being an empty echo.

A close look at the cunning tactics Japan has been using against Korea nowadays undeniably seems as if staring at the ghost of Abe Nobuyuki from seven decades ago. Japan's hit-and-run style of approaching its issues with Korea involving the Japanese military “comfort women,” forced mobilization and slavery of Koreans during the war, and the island Dokdo's sovereignty are more than enough to act as a reminder of the aforementioned outrageous remark made by a Japanese after losing the war.

False Descriptions of Dokdo in Newly Approved Japanese Textbooks

First, let us look at the Dokdo issue. Just as those approved in 2014 and 2015, the newly approved Japanese textbooks for 2016 released on March 18 continue to deliver Japan's stance that "Dokdo is Japanese territory." The content of such textbooks have been arranged to be "authored according to government guidelines," but matters has become graver since such false exaggerations are now included in new textbooks for high school students as well. There has been a stark increase in the amount of descriptions about Dokdo in the recently approved high school textbooks compared to those in elementary or middle school textbooks, and goes as far as to include ludicrous claims like "Japan's sovereignty over Dokdo had already been established during the Edo period." Such claims are paired with a statement saying that Korea unilaterally announced Dokdo as its own territory in 1952 and has illegally occupied the island ever since.

These claims by the Japanese government are but distortions of history. That the Joseon government and the Tokugawa shogunate had already been through a dispute in the seventeenth century over the sovereignty of the islands Ulleungdo and Dokdo and had arrived at an agreement that both belonged to Joseon back then is by now an internationally acknowledged fact. And despite countless historical evidence that support the fact that Dokdo is part of Korean territory, Japan's government-approved textbooks still communicate false descriptions of history such as "Japan secured the sovereignty of Dokdo during the Edo period."

On the day the newly approved textbooks were released, Suzuki Hideo, a minister at the Japanese embassy in Seoul, was summoned into the office of the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs to receive an official complaint from the Korean government. That, however, seems to clearly come across as an exercise by the Korea government to save face and even Japan appears to regard it as no more than a fleeting incident. What is the difference between Japan insisting Dokdo is its own territory when the island is historically, geographically, and legally an undeniable part of Korea and someone claiming that a woman is one's own wife when she is legally wed to another? How, then, should the South Korean government react to Japan's actions? Now that historical views leaning to the far right have become more vocal than ever in Japan since the Abe administration came into power, it is time for South Korea to do away with its previous ways of responding and devise new and more effective countermeasures.

Resolution to Comfort Women Issue Up Against Criticism

The South Korean government's current plan to resolve the comfort women issue has also been unable to escape criticism for being too half-hearted and self-conscious. Now would be the time to remember the words the former comfort woman Kim Hak-eun cried out in despair twenty-three years ago. "What has the government done so far? Nothing other than minding not to get in Japan's way."

It is a widely-recognized fact that apologies and reparation offered by Japan so far to former comfort women has been nowhere near what they have hoped for. On December 28, 2015, the South Korean government announced that a settlement has been dramatically reached with the Japanese government on the comfort women issue. Yet, each side's interpretation of the settlement remains disparate and experts have already pointed out that Japan's offer was more or less identical to the one Lee Myung-bak's administration had refused to accept back in 2012.

What is more is that not long after this dramatic settlement was reached, Japan went on to blur descriptions about comfort women in newly approved high school textbooks by omitting who had actually been responsible for "recruiting women from colonies" or "sending women in colonies to comfort stations." In 2015, prior to reaching the settlement on the comfort women issue, Japanese Prime Minister Abe mentioned in a statement that "We must never forget that there were women behind the battlefields whose honour and dignity were severely injured." How must we then understand that comment against the Japanese government guidelines released later on for the approval of high school textbooks?

Another phenomenon we should keep our eyes open to is surging Japanese sentiments of hate toward Korea and talk currently circulating in Japan about "newly conquering Korea" through some form of economic invasion, which is reminiscent of the disarmament Korea underwent after it was forced by Japan to enter into an unfair treaty in 1905. This is all the more reason why the South Korean government should quit issuing chary slap-on-the-wrist diplomatic responses and start searching for fundamentally new and effective ways of handling diplomacy toward Japan.

As Abe Shinzo, who comes from a family of class-A war criminals, became prime minister, Japan has successfully promoted its so-called right to self-defense and amended article 9 of its constitution, turning itself into a country legally capable of engaging in warfare. In the face of such developments covered, am I truly the only one reminded of Abe Nobuyuki's horrendous vows of revenge in the midst of running away from losing the war?