뉴스레터

The terrible, postwar, Korea-Japan relationship continues. It looks as if we are trapped in a dark tunnel. The Japanese government is denying it, but the direct cause of its export restrictions in July 2019 was because of the Korean Supreme Court’s ruling on forced labor last year. The Japanese government’s “theory of laborers” and domestic economists’ “claim of coercion denial” were the processes that blocked the tunnel’s exit. I think that all of this was the result of looking away from the history of the Asia-Pacific War and becoming aware of it in a piecemeal fashion.

Reality is Seen Only after Facing the Facts

There is no indication that the Korea-Japan relationship that is trapped in a tunnel will improve anytime soon. Ten years ago, Mr. Gang Deok-sang, a Korean-Japanese historian, diagnosed the “background of Japanese society’s recently heightened nationalism against Korea” as the “unfinished closure of the past colonial era” and claimed that its resolution should begin with “letting the people of Korea and Japan know the weight of the facts.”

Efforts to feel the weight of the facts from the period of the Asia-Pacific War will be one of the solutions to settle the Korea-Japan rocky relationship. However, the “weight of the facts” is “complicated” and the process of feeling that weight requires “long time” and “patience.” But this is one of the processes that must be undergone without fail because urging or condemning Japan merely cannot be the solution. Compared to efforts to know the facts, “urging or condemning” is an easy way out. Another solution would be to clarify a critical mind related to the topic, “Why we criticize Japan today, marking the 74^th anniversary of liberation.”

Reiterated History Straying from the Truth

Personally, I had many opportunities to feel the weight of the facts. The first opportunity came while I was in charge of the fact-finding job within the government related forced labor for 11 years. I had a lot of chances to talk with citizens as well as journalists about the problem of forced labor during the Asia-Pacific War. During the process, I came to know that more people than I had originally thought did not understand facts, and this prompts them to stay in the mindset that feels “sentiment toward Japan.”

I found that the reason for this comes from the fact that citizens have only limited access to information. Books that can be read easily are scarce and there is a lot of biased content. It is through textbooks and media that citizens encounter the problems of forced labor and the history of Japan during the Asia-Pacific War. Textbooks account for a greater portion, among other things. People in the media also have many opportunities to learn about history through textbooks. But textbooks contain a lot of mistakes and there are barely any opportunities to teach them. There are few, if any, who claim to have learned modern history before graduating high school. People who go through these educational courses enter the world and produce historical programs as journalists, producers, film directors, and writers. There are numerous cases in which these programs contain unverified errors to help raise the effects of delivery or because of a tight production schedule. The problem is that these programs stimulate and influence citizens.

The second chance came from Japan’s process of registering industrial heritage during the Meiji era. I happened to prepare materials and the logic with related government ministries to deliver the demand from Korea and other damaged nations for historicity be reflected in locations related to compulsory mobilization from among the candidates to be registered. During the process, I wrestled with the processes and ways of objectifying damages committed against Koreans. A large part of response processes toward Japan was to create the logic of correcting and coping with errors and limitations in Korean society. A Japanese reporter brought materials explaining the “draft” uploaded on the dictionary of the country’s famous portal website saying, “I can’t believe the fact that they said there had been compulsory mobilization of Koreans in the pertinent location.” That’s what was written in Korean textbooks, but it was erroneous. There were also barriers erected by Korea’s academic circles and society. This was the result of having emphasized only the “status of damages” at a time when it was insufficient to figure out Japan’s wartime posture needed to begin the Asia-Pacific War. The narrow framework of perception resulted in limiting the scope of coercion. And these academic errors have spread in society through the media.

Then why did the academic world spawn these errors? This was the consequence of following errors that begun when it was difficult to access data and objectify perception amid the tough research environment of the 1960s without the verification of errors by younger scholars. Errors are not confined to the academic circles either. It had been known for a long time that the so-called “wall photograph” on which the phrase “Mom, I’m hungry” was written had nothing to do with the period of compulsory mobilization. However, it is still used as the background photo for broadcasting programs and is part of an exhibit in the National Memorial Museum of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Occupation. People appearing in most photos believed to be those related to the forced mobilization of Koreans, like photos of laborers struggling to mine coals or having nothing but skin and bones, are not Koreans. They are Japanese.

Errors spawned by Japanese society are not small. Residents in Hashima called Gunhamdo, who claim that there was no forced mobilization of Koreans, could not distinguish between general Koreans who visited Japan before compulsory mobilization and laborers during the period of forced mobilization. A small number of oral records and photo albums could not confirm the existence of children having worked in coal mines, civil engineering construction sites, and munitions factories. There are photos of Korean children in the photo album left by Eidai Hayashi, a documentary writer who died in 2017. The baby-faced children with small faces wear sloppy national suits sitting in the front row. This photo album can be bought easily from Japanese bookstores. But a front-page article in the February 2015 edition of the Sankei Shimbun was headlined, “There were no boy miners in Hashima.” A Korean economist is spreading the news, “There were no boy miners. There was no forced mobilization of Koreans,” among the public through diverse means.

Taking One More Step Towards the Truth through Facts as a Researcher

Against this backdrop, as a researcher who has met those that suffered from forced labor damages and who has been handling such data since 1995, the question of what I could do has always been a heavy-hearted task that goes beyond my personal agony. This book is one of the processes to perform this task. I think I have been able to share a few agonies acquired through the victims, journalists, and citizens with the publication of the educational book series by the Northeast Asian History Foundation. Of course, it was impossible to write all of these agonies into the slim book. However, I wanted to make sure that the compulsory mobilization during the period of the Asia-Pacific War didn’t damage Koreans alone, but damaged the masses of the Asia-Pacific region together, and that it was not a problem confined to Korean alone, but a joint task of South and North Korea. At the very least, I wanted to publicize that the relics of the Asia-Pacific War are not the stories of other countries but those of our villages. I sincerely wish that this book serves as an occasion to open the dark tunnel of Korea-Japan relations.