BOOK REVIEW BY MATSUKI KUNITOSHI
Anti-Japanese Tribalism
By Lee Yeong-hoon et al.
Conscientious scholars rise up
At long last conscientious Korean historians have risen up to reveal the truth about theircountry’s past. Since December 2018 six courageous scholars affiliated with theNakseongdae Institute of Economic Research (whose president is Lee Yeong-hoon, Seoul
National University emeritus professor) have broadcast 45 episodes of a lecture series
exposing the falsification of postwar Korean history over the Lee Sung-man YouTubeChannel. The broadcasts have focused on two main topics, which the authors cite as thesource of the Korean crisis: anti-Japanese tribalism and the comfort-women dispute.
Using primary, contemporaneous sources such as statistics and documentation, theauthors refute the anti-Japanese historical perception embraced by Korean historians;
their arguments are so logically sound that they leave absolutely no room for rebuttal.
Their lecture notes formed the basis of a book entitled Anti-Japanese Tribalism: The Rootof the Korean Crisis, which came out in July 2019. Almost from the moment of its
publication, the book became a bestseller; by the end of October more than 130,000
copies had been sold. No social science book has ever done so well in Korea. Its successhas been likened to sales of 1,000,000 copies in Japan, once differences in reading habits
and population are accounted for.
What Mr. Lee means by tribalism is South Korea’s failure to form a civil society. In otherwords, Korean nationalism has not progressed beyond hostility between tribes in a world
where only the strong survive. Korean anti-Japanese sentiment has no connection
whatsoever with healthy nationalism; it is a tribalist sentiment that creates imaginary
enemies of the Japanese. This is the world of shamanism and totemism, both of which are
deep-rooted in the Korean culture. The authors see through this exceedingly unscientific,
exclusive ideology that positions Japan as a nation of absolute evil (nation of demons),and Korea as one of absolute good (nation of angels).
If the book had been written by a Japanese, portions of it might be indirect orcircumlocutory. But the authors of Anti-Japanese Tribalism mince no words; they say
exactly what they mean and, as a consequence, their arguments are very persuasive. For
instance, the Preface (entitled “A Nation of Lies”) begins as follows:
It is an internationally well-known fact that Korea has a culture of lies. In
2014 1,400 persons were prosecuted for perjury, 172 times the Japaneseequivalent (or 430 times, if population difference is taken into account).
There were 1,250 times as many charges stemming from false accusations
than in Japan. Insurance fraud is rampant; in 2014 total insurance fraud
amounted to 4.5 trillion won, 100 times the US figure.

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These figures alone give readers a clear picture of the nature of disputes between Japanand Korea.
Lee Yeong-hoon also writes about a Korean Supreme Court case in which the court
ordered Nippon Steel to pay damages to former (allegedly exploited) conscripted workers
in October 2018. Lee maintains that this was a civil case, pure and simple, and whatreally happened was that a Korean dormitory supervisor failed to hand over salary
payments to Korean workers.
He adds, “I find it incredible that a case like this went all the way to the Supreme Court!
Justices are not historians. They are only jurists who know nothing about the situation
during the war.”(…)“It never occurred to them that the plaintiffs might be lying. After all, they’ve been taught
nothing but lies since childhood.”
Lee’s logic is authoritative and irrefutable.
Authors are true patriots
Lee Woo-youn, one of the contributors to Anti-Japanese Tribalism, holds a doctorate ineconomics, and has done exhaustive research on wartime conscripted workers. He heads
a movement that opposes the placement of a statue commemorating such workers in frontof the Japanese Consulate in Busan, and chairs the Alliance Against Anti-JapaneseTribalism as well. In response to an invitation from the International Research Institute ofControversial Histories (of which I am a member), Lee Woo-youn traveled to the United
Nations Office at Geneva in July 2019. At a session of the UNHRC (United Nations
Human Rights Council) held there, the two of us delivered a speech that revealed the liesthat have overshadowed the dispute about conscripted workers. Additionally, at anauxiliary event, Lee Woo-youn spoke about the wartime situation from the perspective ofa Korean scholar. He thoroughly discredited the accusation that Korean workers werepaid less than their Japanese colleagues or otherwise discriminated against, providing
irrefutable, contemporaneous, official statistics and other pertinent information (forinstance, dangerous tasks were not assigned to inexperienced Korean laborers).
Not long after Lee Woo-youn delivered his speeches, his countrymen subjected him tovicious insults and death threats. Upon his return home, the television network Munhwa
Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) branded him a traitor. Hoodlums stormed into hisoffice, where they spat on him, screamed insults, and threatened him. Furthermore, he hasbeen charged with a crime: joining with an enemy nation in a conspiracy against theRepublic of Korea. For this crime there is only one punishment: death.

2Lee Yeong-hoon, chairman of the Nakseongdae Institute, has also been the target ofdefamation lawsuits, and his fellow authors have been subjected to vehement invective of
all sorts and threatened with legal action. It is very possible that their lives are in danger.
But they are not deterred in the least, because they are convinced that the Korean politicsof lies, diplomacy of lies, and culture of lies have become so ingrained as to threaten thevery survival of their nation. Far from traitors, they are patriots of the highest caliber.
It is obvious that the falsification of historical fact in the educational systems in place inboth Japan and Korea during the postwar era has shaped the relationship between the twonations that we see today. The Koreans have contaminated their students with resentment
against Japan, while the Japanese have instilled their students with a misguided sense ofguilt toward Koreans. If this relationship is allowed to continue as it stands now, spiritualdegeneration will lead both nations to ruin. To prevent such a fate, both Japanese andKoreans must reclaim their true history and take pride in the blood that courses in theirveins — a gift from their ancestors.
The ancestors of today’s Japanese were not aggressors. Nor did they abduct Koreans forany reason. The ancestors of today’s Koreans were not so weak-willed as to stand bypassively as their daughters or girlfriends were rounded up by Japanese military policeand forced to become sex slaves. All of them were simply doing their best to fulfill their
dreams of better lives for their parents and their children.
I am convinced that peace in the true sense of the word can be achieved between our twonations only if their citizens discard the history of lies and offer their appreciation to theirancestors for establishing a foundation for the prosperity we enjoy today.
To that end, I offer my fervent hope that Anti-Japanese Tribalism, a book that patriots
risked their lives to write, reaches the widest possible audience in Japan and Korea.
Note: The Japanese version of this book was published by Bungei Shunju, Ltd. inNovember 2019. To date (December 2, 2019) 300,000 copies have been sold.

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