Chapter four: Anti-Japanese Korea was made by Japan
Varying images of Queen Min, ranging from a vicious beauty to the people’s mother, clockwise fromtop right: Sino-Japanese War and Amazon Queen Min (1965), Women at Jing Fu Palace (1971),
Queen Min’s Magical Sword (1970), and Like Fire, Like a Butterfly (2009).

About the K-coefficient
Sympathy and superiority

When we Japanese talk about Korea and the Korean people, we feel somewhat awkward orundecided, as if something stuck in our throat. Even those who talk frankly about other countries,
such as the United States, Russia or even China, become less than concise when it comes to dealing
with Korea. For example, Japanese people say “Korean people” instead of “Koreans” or even when
it is due criticism against Korea (Koreans), Japanese add, “I don’t think all of the Korean people arelike that” or “Though the same thing applies to the Japanese…” as if in excuse. In speaking of Korea,
the Japanese tend to be somewhat reserved or humiliated.
That is, “Korea” narrated through our speech or the pen is biased with a certain kind of propensity
and I will call this bias “Korea-coefficient” or “K-coefficient” for short. Please regard K-coefficienthere as something like a constant: when Japanese talk about Korea, the K-coefficient is always there.
Flower-garden leftists and Korea-phobes are no exceptions. Quite naturally, there are individual
differences in K-coefficient. It may be easier to grasp the effect with multiples of 1K, 2K, 3K,
according to the greatness of effect of K-coefficient. For instance, regarding the telltaling diplomacy
on the part of the Korean President, the Sankei Newspaper’s reporting can be multiplied by 1K,
while the Asahi Newspaper’s by 3K.

In fact, reading the book entitled Asahi versus Sankei from Seoul: The Korean Peninsula—What to
do with it or what will become of it (Asahi Shinsho), which features a dialogue between Mr.
Ichikawa Hayami, the then Seoul Branch chief of The Asahi Newspaper and Mr. Kuroda Katsuhiro,
the then Seoul Branch chief of The Sankei Newspaper, the difference in the reporting of Korea
between the two newspapers is clear and evident.

Kuroda: When I criticize Korea today, you criticize my reporting as being discriminatory,
dominating and making fun or making Korea look foolish.

1

Ichikawa: To be exact, Mr. Kuroda, you yourself may not intend to do so, but you make readers feelthat way. [Laughs.] Mr. Kuroda, since you are a great reporter, you must take due responsibility.

Kuroda: Well, once you and other Asahi Newspaper reporters live in Korea, you unofficiallycomplain that this won’t do, this is absurd, ridiculous and so on. But officially, you cannot report that,
because you think that if you report exactly what you feel to Japanese people, you only increase
discrimination and prejudice against Korea. At first, I thought that way, too, myself. But gradually, I
came to think that is not right. It is hypocritical.
Ichikawa: No, that’s not hypocrisy. What I’m saying is that certain manners are needed.

Kuroda: If facts are inconvenient, it will be worse when you hide the facts or pretend not to see them.
[omitted] Korea is no longer what it used to be. You can say what you want to say. You can criticize
Korea. It is quite another matter whether Japanese people form prejudiced or discriminatory views as
a result of your criticism. [omitted] Now that readers, viewers and listeners obtain information
through their own channels and there are various contacts and exchanges through business or otheroccasions, the Japanese can judge Korea by themselves. It is the Asahi Newspaper’s peculiar senseof discrimination that the Asahi gives special consideration to Korea. In a sense.
Ichikawa: I don’t think we discriminate against Korea.
Kuroda: You Asahi people don’t look the Koreans in the face.
Throughout this dialogue, Mr. Ichikawa of the Asahi Newspaper firmly holds the stance that “wemust give special consideration when it comes to criticizing or rebuking Korea, because it increases
Japanese discrimination against Koreans.” What he probably meant to say was that we must give
special consideration to the Korean’s complicated state of mind which derives from Japan’s past ruleover Korea. At the same time, he meant that since Japanese people initially are discriminatory or
prejudiced against Korea, articles that criticize Korea may further enhance such negative emotions.
Mr. Ichikawa even said, “In principle, I don’t think it proper for the Japanese media to criticize
Korea.”The special “consideration” given to Korea here is the K-coefficient. Mr. Ichikawa uses the word
“manners,” but I feel that this word is irrelevant.

Against this, Mr. Kuroda of The Sankei Newspaper added that his own reporting is (was) affected by2

the K-coefficient, “I thought the same way at first.”
I almost agree with Mr. Kuroda, “It is a kind of a sense of superiority to regard Korea as a victim ora weak neighbor because Japan once ruled Korea in the past. I thought it would be better and naturalfor us to regard Korea as an ordinary foreign country with which we should deal with on equal terms.
This is the proper way to deal with a neighbor.”
In other words, by multiplying by the K-coefficient, “Korea” we speak of becomes far more than an
ordinary foreign country and becomes a “special neighbor.” To remain a special neighbor forever
does not constitute a sound relationship. That’s Mr. Kuroda’s point. Superiority, in the name of
sympathy, as Mr. Kuroda puts it, is exactly what the K-coefficient is.

The Korean-style boom which suddenly appeared out of the blue must have been a product of ascheme using the K-coefficient on the part of the Japanese. It is doubtful whether professional critics
were not at all affected by complicated psychology which made them think that Korean talent is
excellent simply because they are Koreans or fear lest they should be called racist if they say they
don’t like Korean dramas.

Acid or safe

11 PM was a ground-breaking midnight TV variety program. In the program, one of the mostpopular segments was a series called Trip to Secret Hot Springs. A bunny-girl reporter visited hot
springs in various regions. In retrospect, I don’t think it was very exciting, but I remember that the
hot spring segment was highly enjoyable to middle-aged or older men who were liked watching
young girls bathe in spas. The Trip to Secret Hot Springs made its first overseas coverage andshowed a Korean spa. I’m not quite sure about the location but it was a remote hot spring around
Pusan. After the video segment showing the bunny-girl reporting on a hot spring, I clearly rememberthat a commentator at the studio in Japan, Mr. Fujimoto Giichi (a writer) said, “Now our bunny justsaid, ‘This is a safe spring, rare in Korea.’ But this is very impolite. I must apologize.”“Huh?” I thought for a moment. If what Mr. Fujimoto had said was right, it would certainly havebeen an improper remark, misleading viewers. It was extremely impolite to the Korean tourist
bureau that had allowed coverage. However, the bunny’s words clearly stayed in my ears. What thebunny really said, “This is an acid spring, rare in Korea.”
She just explained the hot spring’s acidic water quality. During the program, the bunny, who was3watching her video segment, immediately called the station and Mr. Fujimoto admitted that he heard
her wrong, making another correction. At that time, I wondered what made him hear “safe” insteadof “acid.” One possibility is that the K-coefficient deep in Mr. Fujimoto’s subconsciousness did it. It
was their first time ever reporting from Korea and no mistakes were allowed. Mr. Fujimoto wasunder such great pressure, fearing that the young reporter did not know about Japan’s era of Korean
Annexation and would make a mistake in front of Koreans, that he heard the girl totally wrong. It isa delusion that perpetuates itself, that the Japanese are always giving trouble to the Koreans--while
the Japanese struggle to avoid appearing arrogant to Korea. At the same time, it most likely that Mr.
Fujimoto wondered to himself, “Are hot springs in Korea really safe?” really looking down upon
Korea.

As I have stated, the K-coefficient is a specially flavored blend of excessive considerations born outof the Japanese sense of guilt toward Korea and essential superiority on the part of the Japanese.

Overcoming K-coefficient thinking
Even Mr. Fujimoto Giichi, who was a famous Naoki Prize1 winning writer, was entranced by thespell of the K-coefficient. In fact, intellectual elitists easily fall for the K-coefficient.

Of course, this book aims to help free readers from the influences of the K-coefficient. But animmediate fix should not be expected. In the first place, at present, it is impossible to completely
eliminate the K-coefficient from Japanese thinking. Right or wrong, it is the Japanese’s character tobe bashful and to retreat when speaking with others. If I could give just one piece of advice, I would
remind readers to always be conscious about the ”K-coefficient” when touching upon things Korean
and about Korea.
In speaking with your acquaintances about Korea, check yourself on what you say: “Now, I’m under
the influence of the K-coefficient.” Perhaps it would help if you said to yourself, while watching TV,“This commentator has a high K-coefficient. Probably 2K.”

And, if possible, I would like readers to have keep the K-coefficient in the back of their minds.
When you are hesitant to bluntly state your views on Korea, you can start off by mentioning, “I am

1

The Naoki Prize is one of the two major Japanese literary awards for novelists, which was established in 1935 inhonor of novelist Naoki Sanjugo (1891-1934) by publisher Bungei Shunju-sha (headed by Kikuchi Kan). The othermajor literary prize is the Akutagawa Prize for pure literature in honor of Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927), which
was established at the same time of the Naoki Award. Both Prizes are given to prominent writers of popular andserious literature, respectively, twice every year.

4speaking with the K-coefficient in mind.” Then your listeners will understand what you are trying to
say without reservation. This will be a good thing. Outwardly, the conversation is polite, but at costof serious conversation. In discussions with people who you do not know, such as when in serious
discussion on topics of Korea or with a stranger, this technique of revealing their K-coefficient
would be most helpful. Thus, gradually nullifying the K-coefficient will be the best way to overcome
the K-coefficient.

Japan made anti-Japanese heroes
Heroes as terrorists

In Korea, a bizarre work of fiction has been the center of much discussion, wherein An Jung-geun,
Ito Hirobumi’s assassin, travels through time and shoots Japanese Prime Minister Abe at Halpin
Station. The title of the book is in fact An Jung-geun Shot Abe. In the book, Prime Minister Abebarely escaped death after he was shot. An Jung-geun was caught, red-handed for his attempted
assassination. Thereafter, what Koreans think is the best part, the story starts. During the trial, awitness stated that, “Prime Minister Abe committed 15 crimes (including the comfort women issue,
Takeshima Island, history textbook revision, Yasukuni Shrine and on and on) and defended his own
righteousness while committing a crime that is condemned by most of civilized society. His
grandiose, dauntless posturing moved the judge and, of course, influenced the outcome of the trial.

The author of this piece of time-travel pornography is Mr. Kim Jong-hyun, who is well-known inJapan for his widely received Days with My Father, which depicting family love. I then realized thebottomless filthiness of the Korean literary circle.

The three great Korean heroes are An Jung-geun, Yi Bong-chang, and Yoon Bong-gil—anti-Japanese
terrorists.

Yi Bong-chang was behind the so-called Sakuradamon Gate Incident, which took place in January
1932. Yi threw a bomb at the Emperor Showa’s carriage and seriously injured an Imperial guard.
Yoon Bong-gil was the ringleader of a bombing that occurred during a ceremony of the Emperor’sbirthday held at Hungkou Park in Shanghai in April of the same year (1932). He threw a bomb at thecrowd present at the ceremony, killing and injuring many people. While these two assassins wererather popular as Korean professional killers, Jung-geun was by far the most popular and familiar of
all Korean murderers. Furthermore, it may not be a stretch to say that Jung-geun is an idol and superhero among the Korean people—in fact, An Jung-geun appears on various and numerous
5commercial items. Picture books, comic books and cartoons show An’s heroic deeds. Figurines,
three-dimensional paper art reenacting the Halpin assassination, paper masks commemorating him
are available even for toddlers, and so on, are on sale throughout Korea.

An Jong-geun was actually loved by Rightists
An’s popularity is unparalleled because he was the first anti-Japanese terrorist and his popularity
owes much to how he is portrayed in Japan. “Portrayed” may sound misleading. While Yi
Bong-chang and Yoon Bong-gil are regarded as mere thugs in Japan, An Jung-geun is somehow
given a honorable status as patriotic fighter for independence.

It is clear from an essay An Jung-geun wrote in prison, entitled n Peace in East Asia, that An
Jung-geun held reverence toward the Japanese Emperor and An heartily congratulated Japan on its
victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Perhaps for this reason, both in the past and at present,
so-called Japanese rightists think highly of An. Mr. Nomura Shusuke, a so-called leader of a newrightist party, stated that An Jung-geun was an esteemed historical figures. The observation that“lone wolf” An killed only one person might underlie rightist sympathies. An is seen as anultra-rightist while terrorists such as Yi Bong-chang and Yoon Bong-gil are viewed as ultra-leftists.

It is well-known that Chiba Jushichi, a warden at the Port Arthur Prison where An was imprisoned,
was in charge of An and was greatly fascinated by An’s character. The warden was caring andunderstanding of An until An’s death. It is an equally moving story that An, to reward Chiba’s
devotion, made some calligraphy with Indian ink and gave it to Chiba as a token of gratitude. Chiba
cherished An’s writing as a family treasure and never failed to perform mass for An for the rest of hislife. Kurihara Sadakichi, the chief of Port Arthur Prison and Mizuno Yoshitaro, An’s lawyer, wereJapanese who came to be closely united with An through a special friendship. Attorney Mizuno
compared An to a valiant samurai fighter of the end of the Edo Period and maintained that An
deserved the sentence of three years in prison, the lightest punishment for murder.

On the other hand, how were An Jung-geun and his case viewed within Korea, which was thencalled the Empire of Korea?
“Having lost Ito, we no longer have a great leader in the East. The prince had declared that he would
devote himself with loyalty and justice to the development of Korean civilization, determined to beburied at Mt. Paektu. Although Japan has many statesmen, none but Ito truly desires peace in theEast, looking far and wide at the global trend. Truly, Ito is our country’s benevolent father. If anyone
6dares to attempt to damage the benevolent father, the perpetrator is extremely ignorant of the reasonof things. He may probably be a foreign wanderer.”
So stated Gojong2 of Korea when he heard of Ito’s death. After the revelation of The Hague Secret
Emissary Affair3, Ito dethroned Gojong. Since then Gojong had hard feelings toward Ito. However,
Gojong held Ito in esteem, calling him a “remarkable man” and “our country’s benevolent father.”He expressed the deepest condolences upon Ito’s death. For An, however, Gojong had nothing but
loathing, stating, “The perpetrator is a wanderer, totally ignorant of the meaning of things.” In theeyes of Gojong, it was Ito Hirobumi, not An Jung-geun, that truly wished for peace in the East.

The Korean Government reacted the same way. Among the intellectual class in Korea at the time, it
was the majority’s view that “An committed a stupid crime, only to become the shame of thenation.” A war might have been declared upon the assassination of a prominent figure such as aformer Prime Minister. It is quite understandable how the Korean people utterly trembled following
the incident. The Korean Society, having thirty thousand members, stated that “the assassination was
not at all the intention of the Korean people” and sent condolences. They even formed a delegationof members to apologize for the incident and sent them to Japan. Ten thousand people mourned inSeoul and mourning was held in other parts of Korea as well.

The meeting of the sons

In October 1932, twenty-three years after Ito Hirobumi was assassinated, a temple in memory of Ito
was established at Namsan in Seoul. The temple was named Hakubun-ji Temple, based on the onreading of Ito’s first name. The chief promoter of the establishment was Han San-yong, who had
been closely acquainted with Ito. Mr. Han was called the “Shibusawa Eiichi4 of Korea” and aleading figure in the Korean financial world. He was one of the founders of Hansong Bank. It is said
that when the temple was built, a great sum of money was donated by citizens of the Korean
Peninsula.

On October 15, 1939, a Buddhist ceremony for the thirtieth anniversary was held at Hakubun-ji
2Gojong (1852-1919) was the last king of the Joseon Dynasty and the first Emperor of the Empire of Korea.
The Hague Secret Emissary Affair resulted from Korean Emperor Gojong secretly sending three emissaries to theSecond Peace Conference at the Hague, the Netherland, in 1907. There the emissaries were to declare the invalidityof Japanese diplomatic maneuvers, including the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1905 and to assert the monarch’s rights torule Korea independent of Japan. Not only did the attempt fail, but the Emperor contravened the Treaty.
4 Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931) was a Japanese industrialist widely known today as the “father of Japanese
capitalism.” He spearheaded the introduction of Western capitalism to Japan after the Meiji Restoration. He
introduced many economic reforms including use of double-entry accounting, joint-stock corporations and modernbanks that issued currency.
37

Temple. On this occasion, Ito Hirobumi’s eldest son Bunkichi and An Jung-geun’s son An Jung-sen
met for the first time. Mr. An Jung-sen lived in Shanghai, but he temporarily returned to Korea as amember of a pro-Japanese organization, the “Manchu-Korea Delegation.”“For father’s atonement, sincere patriotism—destined son An Jung-sen pays homage at Prince Ito’s
altar. At Hakubun-ji Temple deep in autumn, enshrined An Jung-geun, united in one by Buddhist
benevolence.”

This was the headline from the Seoul Daily (dated October 16, 1939) which reported Mr. An
Jung-sen’s visit to Hakubun-ji Temple. At the altar, not only Ito’s but also An Jung-geun’s memorialtablets and portraits were placed. Seeing Mr. Ito Bunkichi pray and give incense not only for his
father but also for An Jung-geun, who had killed his father, An’s son was so moved as to burst intotears. On the next day, the two met at the Korean Hotel and reconciliation was officially madebetween the two sons.

Some say that there was political motivation behind the meeting. However, in the past and thepresent, in the West and the East, there is always an “intention” when it comes to conciliation. Rather,intentions make it easier to achieve conciliation. Above all, the meeting was a ceremony necessary toconfirm the fact that a crime committed by parents does not reach down to their children.

After Korea regained independence, Hakubun-ji Temple was put under the administration of the
Korean Government and was bought out by the Samsung financial conglomerate. Presently, at thesite, stands the Silla Hotel Guest House. There is nothing left of the temple. However, it isworthwhile to note here the fact that until the very moment the temple was demolished, the temple
stood at Namsan in Seoul, ensconcing the souls of Ito Hirobumi and An Jung-geun.

This was how An Jung-geun was regarded both in Japan and Korea until the War broke out. In fact,
it was after Korea achieved independence that An became revered as a heroic fighter for
independence. Still, An Jung-geun’s prewar reputation seems too exaggerated.

Allow me to repeat: it is my view that the inflated image of An Jung-geun among the Korean people
must have something to do with the vindicatory view of An Jung-geun in Japan.
In the postwar years in Korea, it is very likely that there was a jump from “An Jung-geun wasrespected by the Japanese people” to “even the sinful Japanese could not help but recognize soundarguments made by An Jung-geun” and, furthermore, “what An Jung-geun did must be considered8just.” Eventually, extreme pronouncements were made: An Jung-geun was a hero who fought against
the evil Imperial Japan for peace in the East and a man the Korean people can be proud of,” while
Ito Hirobumi was the “Imperial Japan’s ringleader for the invasion of Asia.” After the War, An
Jung-geun’s “valiant action” was repeatedly dramatized in movies and other media, just like thestory of Chushingura5 in Japan. Many such fables have helped make An Jung-geun a heroic figure.
Fiction transforms into historical fact in due time. This is quite a natural phenomenon in Korea.
“Hate the crime, but not the perpetrator” and “Good for you, enemy!”
The Japanese people are very fond of the phrase of “Hate the crime, but not the perpetrator.” Thecatchphrase of a Japanese fictional hero Gekko Kamen [Moonlight Mask], written by Kawauchi
Yasunori, was: “Don’t hate. Don’t kill. Let’s forgive.”

Some think that even the perpetrator of a crime deserves to be judged differently in the light of his
character and the authenticity of his motive. Because of this view, there are cases in which a lot
sympathy is unnecessarily extended toward criminals. Especially in cases where Korea and Koreans
are involved, this tendency is remarkably present. To mention a few examples, one is the case of
Komatsugawa High School in Tokyo in 1958 and the other an incident involving a Korean named
Kin Kiro (Kwon Hyi-ro) in 1968. Both involved cruel murders and the perpetrators in both cases
were Korean residents in Japan. Eventually, the murder cases turned into squabbling over racism.
The public heard nothing but sympathetic appeals for the criminals. In Kim’s case, he murdered aloan shark because of a debt. The accused in the Komatsugawa High School case, Ri Chin’u (Li Jin
Wu), was nothing but a criminal with an abnormal sexual penchant. He raped then killed a girl, oneof his classmates. After he committed the murder, he abandoned the body on the rooftop of the highschool and sent the victim’s belongings to her family. He seemed to enjoy his provocative acts. (Helater confessed to murdering another woman before murdering his classmate.) Discrimination,
poverty and the like—the mass media’s favorite clichés clouded the truth. This can be interpreted as
meddling of K-coefficient in a different manner. Or, it should be perceived as sentimentalism, rather
than meddling. (The two words happen to be pronounced the same as “kan sho” in Japanese.) The
Japanese people are sentimentalists.
Besides, the Japanese people often fondly praise enemy, saying “Good for you, enemy!”

5

Chushingura refers to Akō Incident which took place in Edo (presently Tokyo) at the beginning of the 18 th century.
Asano Takumino-kami, Lord of Akoo injured high-ranking Lord Kira Kozukeno-suke out of anger inside the Edo
castle. Asano was ordered to commit disembowelment for the fault. Later Asano’s men revenged themselves on Kira.
Many literary works and plays were produced based on the incident.

9The following is the part of words written by Toyama Masakazu of Batto Tai [Drawn Sword Squad](Japanese Imperial Army’s defile march), which is said to be Japan’s oldest military song:

We are the Imperial Army andOur enemies are enemies of the Emperor, unacceptable in Heaven and on Earth
The enemy general is a hero equal to none in glory and victory
And the men who follow are also stalwart and warriors who do not fear death,Even though they are brave enough to frighten the devil, heaven will not pardon their rebellion
Those who have crossed the Emperor have never prospered
Here, the head of the enemy refers to Saigo Takamori6. It is said that this song was about the Battleof Tabaruzaka during the Seinan War (the Satsuma Rebellion) in 1877. The greatest words ofadmiration such as “a hero unparalleled in all ages,” “fierce and determined to die,” and “with valor”
are used to for the enemy, which is typically Japanese in my opinion. I think a military song praising
the enemy is very rarely seen anywhere, in both the East and West.
I’d like to inject a personal matter, but I am from Ueno, Tokyo and I feel very close to the bronze
statue of Saigo-san standing on a hill in Ueno Park, something akin to a childhood companion.
Behind Saigo-san’s statue are tombs of the Shogi-tai Squad members. The Shogi-tai, remnants of thecollapsed Edo Government, were besieged at Ueno Hill and it was Saigo Takamori, leading the new
government’s army, who utterly destroyed the Shogi-tai. It is ironic that Saigo himself later came tobe called an enemy of the Emperor. However, history does not condemn Saigo or the Shogi-tai squad
as “evil” enemies of the Emperor. The Japanese people well understand that Saigo and Shogi-tai
soldiers acted as they did out of sincere concern for their country of Japan in their own desperate
way. This would also be true of the Aizu Domain, which fought for the Tokugawa Shogunate,against the Imperial Army during the Boshin War7 in 1868. If Aizu soldiers were “evil,” the story of“Byakko-tai (White Tiger Squad)8 would have never been so passionately passed down to this day.
In Japan history, there never was absolute evil. Even Taira-no-Masakado9, who truly proved to be an
6

Saigo Takamori (1828-1877) was born in Satsuma (presently Kagoshima Prefecture), one of the most influential
samurai in Japanese history, and one of the three great nobles who led the Meiji Restoration.
7 During the Boshin War, the Imperial Army defeated the Tokugawas at the Battle of Toba-Fushimi. Edo Castle fell
without bloodshed.
8 Byakko-tai was a squad that consisted of boys, aged 16 to 17, from samurai families organized by the Aizu Domain(presently Fukushima Prefecture) when the Boshin War broke out. The boys fought gallantly and died heroic deaths.
9 Taira-no-Masakado (?-940) was a member of a powerful family in the Kanto region during the middle of the Heian
Period. Strife among Taira families spilled over into a huge battle. Masakado attacked the state government and stole
the official seal. Against Emperor Shujaku and the Imperial Court in Kyoto, Masakado declared himself the “newemperor,” and advocated independence for the Eastern region, becoming an enemy of the Emperor. Only two months
after his enthronement, he was subjugated. After death, he was enshrined at various shrines.

10

enemy of the Emperor, is enshrined as a myojin (shining diety). Such is the mentality of this country.
Is this explanation persuasive enough?

The tragedy of Ye Wanyong

However, things are completely different in Korea. When it comes to discussing anything on earth,they can only be seen as right or wrong, just or evil, superior or inferior, black or white, victim or
perpetrator. Dualism is all there is to it. To the Japanese people, the Korean people’s belief inprinciples and general rules seems to be totally intolerant and stubborn. On the contrary, to the
Koreans, the Japanese view of “black and white at the same time” seems to be an ambiguous,
irresponsible and deceptive attitude. The Korean people think that “evil” is evil and there is no roomfor extenuating circumstances; no consideration should be given whatsoever. Thus, the then Korean
Empire’s Prime Minister Ye Wanyong (1858-1926), who signed the treaty of Japan’s Annexation of
Korea in 1910, is now literally regarded as traitor, and his name remains in Korean history only as
the object of cursing among the Korean people. No other opinions are allowed. After World War II,
Ye had his tomb violently desecrated by his great-grandchildren and there is no place left for him torest in peace. The act of desecrating a person’s grave and violating a person’s body is regarded as themost disrespectful means of vengeance, of fulfilling a grudge against someone. Post-war Korea,
entirely rebuking Japanese Annexation period, pressured Ye’s descendants into carrying out this actof revenge in a cruel, dishonorable way.

Was Ye Wanyong really a kind of man who wished ill of his own country? Was what he did ashameful act, of selling his own country for personal gain? No, absolutely, not. Before people like Ye
Wanyong started to civilize Korea after five hundred years’ of the Joseon Dynasty’s drugged slumber,
Korea was about to collapse. Getting under Japan’s protection was the only way left to ensure theexistence of Korea and the Korean people. What Ye and other wise men took was a decision reachedafter countless painful efforts. One of the major factors that brought the country to the edge ofdestruction was the existence of Queen Min, which I will explain later.

Incidentally, Ye Wanyong never learned Japanese at all and whenever people spoke to him inJapanese, Ye ignored them. Only when necessity arose, he talked with Japanese officials in English.
Such an anecdote shows what a firm nationalist he was.

We ought to realize that it is almost impossible for modern Koreans to understand the subtle
Japanese feeling, which has something to do with Bushido (Samurai spirit), such as “hate the crime11but not the perpetrator,” or “Good for you, my enemy!”“Some people think highly of An Jung-geun in Japan” means “An Jung-geun was just, no matter
what,” and then “the Japanese people are afraid to be confronted with justice in the name of An
Jung-geun,” and then “The ‘An Jung-geun’ card can be used against Japanese people who repeatedly
assert historical fallacies.” This is the vector of Korean thinking or their line of logic. In other words,
the Japanese way of thinking, that “what An Jung-geun did was not right, but we can understandwhat he wanted to achieve,” does not make sense in terms of the Korean way of thinking. We shouldstop hoping that somehow Koreans will come to understand our way of thinking, which will not
happen.

I have already mentioned that if the Japanese freely apologize to Koreans on any matter, they will
repeatedly demand apologies from us, forever. At the same time, if we freely praise certain Koreansfor something, this will end up aggravating the Korean people’s already arrogant and hypersensitive
attitude. One can perceive this from the Korean media’s masturbation-like reporting during therecent Korean-style boom in Japan, as all Japanese women supposedly fell for the charms of Korean
popular entertainers. Flattery, irony, virtues of humility and social compliment are useless when
dealing with Koreans.

I hope that readers understand my point, that making a hero and saint out of An Jung-geun was
promoted after World War II, greatly influenced by the Japanese view of An Jung-geun. That is, theimage of An Jung-geun, as an “altruistic man of conviction,” can be said to be a collaboration
between Korea and Japan. Moreover, in Korea, even anti-Japanese heroes could not have beencreated without using a filter called Japan.
For this matter, we heard reports that Kin Kiro was received in Korea as “national hero who fought
against racism” after he was released from prison and we also hear that he lives a quiet, out-of-theway life under the auspices of the Korean Government. Of course, the part referring to “fought
against racism” was an illusion made up mostly by the Japanese media. When Kin Kiro returned
home to Korea, he reverted to typy by committing felonies, including adultery, attempted murder
and arson.

Yi Sun-Shin inflated during the Meiji Period

To mention another super-class Korean anti-Japanese national hero who equals An Jung-geun, we
can think of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin, the legendary hero who defeated Japanese Shogun Toyotomi
12Hideyoshi’s army, and led the Korean navy in the Bunroku and Keicho campaigns (in 1592-3, in
1597-8 respectively).

In the city of Pusan stands a gigantic bronze statue of Yi Sun-Shin, glaring in the direction of Japan.
Also, in recent years, it has become customary for Koreans to wave curtains with portraits of An
Jung-geun and Yi Sun-Shin during soccer matches between Japan and Korea.
As the same with An Jung-geun, Yi Sun-Shin’s heroic image has now established, a mix of both truth
and falsehoods via various visual works and other media. Several years ago, Korean researchers
reproduced a life-size copy of a tortoiseshell ship supposedly used by Yi Sun-Shin’s navy and put it
afloat. The ship almost instantly sank.

The truth is that Admiral Yi Sun-Shin had been a totally forgotten historical figure until modern
times. His revaluation took place in Japan around the Meiji Period.
Prior to that, the name “Yi Sun-Shin” appeared in story books of battles during the Edo Period,
Chosen Taihei-ki [Story of Korean Peace] and Chosen Seibatsu-ki [Story of Korean Conquest], as aniron-cast enemy admiral. In these stories, Admiral Yi was a man of sturdy built, a monster who stood
fast even when an enemy’s bullet hit him on the arm. To depict an enemy as overly strong is fordramatic effect. However, it can be easily seen that this exaggeration had a great influence increating the image of Yi Sun-Shin in later years.
In the Meiji Period, a “Korean boom” emerged within the process of moving from “advocacy of apunitive expedition against Korea” to Japan’s Annexation. It was the original Korean-style boom,
indeed. Along with this boom, heroic Admiral Yi Sun-Shin was unearthed from story books of the
Edo Period. At the time of the Annexation, far from despising Korea, Japan took the trouble tounearth a Korean “hero” whom the Koreans can be proud of and at the same time, have the Japanesepeople say, “Good for you, my enemy!”Moreover, a real story spread that Togo Heihachiro10 mentioned Admiral Yi Sun–Shin as a military
figure who he admired and that Togo prayed for victory in the Battle of the Sea of Japan before Yi’saltar. Thus, the Korean people’s pride was further stimulated.

10

Togo Heihachiro (1848-1934) was born in Satsuma (presently Kagoshima Prefecture). Marshall-Admiral Marquis
Togo Heihachiro was an Imperial Japanese Navy admiral and one of Japan’s greatest heroes. As Commander-in-Chiefof the Combined Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War, he successfully confined the Russian Pacific Fleet to Port
Arthur before winning a decisive victory over a fleet that was sent to relieve it at Tsushima. Togo was called byWestern journalists the “Nelson of the East”.

13

An Jung-geun’s misconception
Let’s get back to An Jung-geun. In my personal estimation, An Jung-geun is like, at best, Mori–noIshimatsu11 . Mori-no-Ishimatsu was careless, flighty and reckless, as characterized by the phrase “afool never learns until he is dead,” in the Japanese traditional storytelling art of Naniwabushi. And
yet, he had a very strong sense of justice and could not stand lies and wrong doing. Above all, he
was the most faithful and devoted to his boss, Jirocho. He was a loveable character.

Imagine Ishimatsu commits a crime and is under detention, while I am the warden watching overhim. I would be naturally charmed by his pure and honest character. And I would truly regret his
current circumstance, that if only he had used his positive character in other fields; he surely would
have accomplished something outstanding. I presume that An Jung-geun, too, was full of such
personal charms.
An’s Ishimatsu-like side (carelessness) was evident in his “fifteen reasons for murdering Ito
Hirobumi” which An cited during his trial.
The first reason was that Ito was the ringleader in the murder of Queen Min. I don’t know who told
him such a lie, but this was An’s mistake. The incident did take place during Ito’s Cabinet. The
murder was clearly committed by Woo Beomseon, commander of a military training battalion, andhis gang, understanding Daewong-gun’s intention, which Woo Boemseon himself admitted. And hehimself was killed in revenge for the murder of Queen Min. Among the people who were at thecrime scene, Prince Sunjong, Queen Min’s son, testified that Woo Boemseon killed the queen, which
is most likely to be the truth. Japanese Minister Miura Goro might be called an accomplice, in a
broad sense, for tacitly allowing Woo Beomseon and his gang’s rebellion to occur. And there wasalso a possibility that Japanese political activists took part in the incident. However, it is perfectly
clear that Ito Hirobumi had nothing to do with the incident.
As for reason number 14, An claimed that Ito poisoned Emperor Komei12. This was also one of his
delusions. Though it is wrong, it is very interesting to see that what made a Korean, An, kill Ito was
to avenge a Japanese Emperor’s death. Isn’t this very proof that An Jung-geon had genuine
reverence for the Japanese Imperial Family?

Mori-no-Ishimatsu (? – 1860) was supposedly a man of chivalry and active at the end of the Edo Period as afollower of Shimizu Jirocho, a gang leader.
12 Emperor Komei (1831-1867) was the 121st Emperor and father of the Emperor Meiji.
1114Laundering the image of bad Queen Min

It seems that a certain pattern has been established to make a Korean hero—first, a Korean historicalfigure is inflated in Japan and then the heroic image is sent back to Korea, where the Korean turns
the image into a god-like anti-Japanese hero.

At present, in Korea, a historical figure is in the process of being idolized, to the degree Yi Sun-Shinand An Jung-geun are. That would be Queen Min, as I previously mentioned.

Queen Min was a foolish woman who led Korea to ruin. Queen Min made light of Korean King
Gojong, her husband, and made the country her own, emptying the treasury for the sole purpose of
Min’s prosperity. She constantly and violently confronted her father-in-law, Daewong-gun. She also
involved in political intrigue, going from Qing (China) to Japan and then to Russia, rendering the
Korean political situation in utter confusion. Without her, there would never have been the
Sino-Japanese War or the Russo-Japanese War. The blood of Japanese youth would have never been
shed. Japan’s Annexation of Korea would have never taken place. She was the worst queen ever, themost wicked woman under Heaven that ruined Korea.

Until the 1970s, this was exactly how Queen Min was regarded in Korea, no more or no less--Queen
Min appeared as a villain in films of the time.

The first of the movies related to Queen Min which were made in Korea after World War II was
Daewong-gun and Queen Min (1959), one film typical of the genre was none other than
Sino-Japanese War and Queen Min (1965), produced by Shin Sang-ok and directed by Im Won-Sik.
Judging from these titles, they must have made these films after being inspired by a series ofJapanese films featuring the Emperor Meiji, such as Emperor Meiji and the Russo-Japanese War(1956), and Emperor and Empress Meiji and the Sino-Japanese War (1958), played by Japanese
actor Arashi Kanjuro, or Ara Kan for short, of Shin Toho Productions. The Korean films were
historical spectacles made in CinemaScope and with an all-star cast. The Queen Min portrayed inthese films is literally an Amazon and a dictatress. Later, Producer Shin Sang-ok was kidnapped by
North Korea together with his actress wife, Choi Eun-hee, who had played Queen Min in the film.
Under Kim Jong-il’s command, Shin made the film Pulgasari, featuring a giant monster withJapanese Toho Production’s special-effects crew. He is a giant figure in the Korean film circle, partly
known in Japan.

15

In the 70s, a strange film, Queen Min’s Magical Sword (1970) appeared which blended Queen Min
martial arts. Im Won-Sik directed this film and actress O Su-Mi played Queen Min. Queen Min in
Women at Jing Fu Palace (1971) was portrayed as a total pain in the neck, mercilessly harassing
King Gojong’s concubine to her heart’s content while Queen Min’s adversary, Daewong-gun, wasfavorably depicted. At the end, Queen Min is killed and Gojong is reunited with his concubine lover,
who has been expelled from the Queen’s palace—they lived happily ever after. Anyway, Queen Min
was not favorably portrayed in this film.

However, in the 80s and onward, Queen Min under went a totally different appraisal, in which
Koreans praised her as a “proud and benevolent mother of the people” or a “sad queen brutally killedby the Imperial Japan’s hungry wolves.” As is always, films and dramas preceded the reappraisal. In
recent years, every time Queen Min appears in visual media, she has been laundered or purified. In
2002, Korean media company KBC produced a drama, Empress Meisei, which was also shown inJapan via satellite broadcast. The TV drama portrayed Queen Min as a proud woman with an iron
will who lived a hard life, distressed by the times. Incidentally, Empress Meisi is Queen Min’s
posthumous name. The Japanese version of the drama’s homepage reads:“Empress Meisei” is, in a sense, the most symbolic figure in the modern history of Korea. The
popular appellation “Queen Min” is a label used to despise Empress Meisei. Imperial Japan at thetime gave her the name based on a colonial view of history. Many negative implications regarding“Empress Meisei” mostly derive from historical fabrications and forgeries produced by theImperialist Japanese Government to justify the fact that they killed Empress Meisei and forciblyoccupied Korea. “A power hungry woman,” “her sole goal in life is to enrich her kin at the expenseof national interests,” “deeply absorbed in power struggles and fickle”—all of these were asserted by
Japan at the time Empress Meisei was killed… “Empress Meisei is an iron woman.” Her greatness is
implied by the words of the first Prime Minister of Japan, Ito Hirobumi, when he whispered, “Thereis no other way to invade Korea but to kill their national mother.”
Of course, what is stated above is entirely contrary to historical facts. The statements, “a power
hungry woman,” “her sole goal in life is to enrich her kin at the expense of national interests,” and“deeply absorbed in power struggles and fickle” are the right assessments of Queen Min. In the firstplace, the appellation “Queen Min” means “a Queen from the Min Family” and there is no
implication of hatred attached to it. Until modern times, there were no records of official female
names either in China or Korea. The name of a famous Chinese queen Yang-kuei-fei (719-756)
means “Her Highness the Queen from the Yang family.” Not to mention, Ito Hirobumi was against
the idea of Japanese annexation of Korea and would have never said, “There is no other way to16invade Korea but to kill their national mother.” This is totally untrue.

Around the time when the TV drama was aired, a musical, titled Empress Meisei (overseas title The
Last Empress), was produced. This musical crossed the seas and was performed in London. At thestart of the show, a totally irrelevant scene was shown, of an atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima,on the screen in the back of the stage. This had nothing to do with Queen Min. Londoners were
naturally taken aback. The producer’s intention might have been to let the audience know thatdropping atomic bombs over Japan was revenge for the assassination of Queen Min. The “atomicbomb” is a term often used by Korea to threaten Japan, with the implication of punitive punishment.

All started from a book
Where on earth did the new interpretation of Queen Min, as “the people’s mother” and “tragic
queen”, come from?

Choe Kye-ho, visiting professor at Korean Kaya University, wrote in his book Korea—Two
Thousand Years’ History of Downfall (Shoden-sha, 2001) the following:

A foolish female Japanese writer once wrote a sympathetic book about Queen Min. However, Queen
Min was an abhorrent woman, disrespectful to her father-in-law, utterly distressed the people andruined the country, while emptying the treasury. We should know that such ignorance of true Korean
history helped to distort the relationship between Japan and Korea.
Though Mr. Choe did not say, the book sympathetic to Queen Min, written by a “female Japanesewriter,” was The Assassination of Queen Min—The People’s Mother at the Last Moment of the
Joseon Dynasty (Shincho-sha, 1988), written by Tsunoda Fusako (1914-2010). The book used many
pages describing the struggles between Queen Min and Daewong-gun and decisively concluded thatthe assassination of Queen Min was singly Japanese Minister Miura’s responsibility. This feeds theJapanese sense of atonement. The image of a “tragic Queen Min” seemingly spread to Korea throughthis book.
As this image settled in Korea, people did not like the appellation of “Queen Min” and a movement
took place to make “Empress Meisei” the official appellation. As I mentioned before, the title of“Empress” is a posthumous label (an honorable name given to a noble person after death). Therefore,
it is quite strange to call Queen Min “Empress Meisei” while she was still alive.

17

Refracted feeling toward female members of the Japanese Imperial family
Conceding as far as I can, I would admit to calling Queen Min a “tragic queen”, who was forced
from this world by murder. This much would be permissible. What would readers think if there wasa wide-spread rumor in Korea that after her death, Queen Min’s body was violated by Japanesepolitical activists? Of course, this rumor is an utter fabrication. This is going too far, as it seems to be
blasphemy and does not promote the image of a “tragic queen”. Though I have no sympathy toward
Queen Min, I cannot help but feel extremely disgusted by this allegation.

The source of this disturbing rumor was a vulgar novel, titled Abduction of the Crown Princess(2001), written by Kim Jin-myung. Mr. Kim is a forerunner in the field of ridiculous, anti-Japanesenovels. He wrote a novel, The Rose of Sharon Bloomed Again (1993), with the story that a united
Korea cooperate in developing nuclear missiles to use against Japan. The book sold four million
copies, becoming a domestic best seller in Korea. Abduction of the Crown Princess outdid his
best-selling book in terms of ridiculousness.
The novel is summarized in the book The Japanese Got Flabbergasted! The Korean People’s False
History of Japan, written by Nohira Shunsui (Shogakukan Bunko). I have further summarized it asfollows:“In the year 200X, in Japan, a history textbook compiled by the Japanese Society for History
Textbook Reform passed authorization and it becomes a big diplomatic issue. Then, one day, a grave
incident occurred—Crown Princess Owada Masako was kidnapped by someone while she wasvisiting the Kabuki-za Theater to see a Kabuki play. The abductors, led by a Korean student studying
in Japan, Kim Inu, placed a newspaper advertisement demanding that the Japanese Government
disclose “Telegram #435” which was sent by the Japanese ministry in the Korean Empire in 1895, in
exchange for the release of the Crown Princess.”

Having read this far, most people may get dizzy. Some may get angry and others may burst intolaughter. But it is too early to be puzzled. The most upsetting is what is written in “Telegram #435”.
“The telegram is about the assassination of Queen Min. It was faithfully reported that Japanesepolitical activistspolitical activists raped Queen Min’s body and in order to conceal the horrible fact,
they cremated the body. The Japanese Government refused to make the telegram public. Crown
Princess Masako somehow obtained the telegram herself and was greatly shocked to read it. With thetelegram in hand, she participated in a UNESCO’s textbook investigation [Author’s note: I have18

never heard of such an investigation.] and made the historical fact known to the world. Thanks to the
Crown Princess’s courageous action, the Japanese people’s atrocity and historical distortion wererevealed to the world. Thus, the ambition of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform
failed.”How do you like that? It took me nearly an hour to get over the abhorrent feeling. Incidentally,
Crown Prince Naruhito, former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, chairman of the Society for
Making New Textbook Fujioka Nobukatsu, the Seoul Branch chief of The Sankei Newspaper
Kuroda Katsuhiro appear in this novel under their real names.
By the way, in Korea, they disdainfully call the Japanese Emperor “Il Wong” (“Jap King”), but they
seem to have strange yearnings toward female members of the Imperial family. They often appear insilly, anti-Japanese books as entities of goodwill. In 2002, a student named Chon Son-hyok, who
failed a university entrance exam, wrote a novel titled Chronicles of Baekje and presented the bookto the Japanese Embassy in Korea. This incident attracted much attention. In the book, Princess Aiko,studying at Harvard University (oddly, the princess was given an English name, Jacqueline) falls inlove with a young Korean man named Yo Min-hyok (a descendant of the king of Baekje) and comesto gain “true historical recognition.” Aside from the absurdity of the story, we know that there is acertain pattern in ridiculous Korean novels.
To them Koreans, “historical recognition” is not the one that Japan and Korea mutually examine andconfirm, but the one that Koreans teach to others. In this novel, Professor Emeritus Wada Haruki ofTokyo University, a real person, appears in his real name. Professor Wada is one of the scholars that
the Koreans recognize as a “conscientious Japanese.”
Let’s get back to the original topic. As I explained repeatedly, violating the dead is in Chinese andKorean culture. In fact, patriotic advocate of civilization, Kim Ok-kyun (1851-1894), is a typicalexample of this horrible culture. He led a coup d’etat against the Min administration, but his victory
was only short-lived. After he briefly held power, he was murdered by Queen Min’s assassin. His
legs and arms were cut off from his body. Then the limbless body was taken across the country andexposed to the elements. His wife was demoted to slave status. This is what the queen called a“benevolent mother of the people” did to her political adversary.
By the way, Kim Ok-kyun was close to Japanese Fukuzawa Yukichi13 and Toyama Mitsuru14

13

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) was a Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur, journalist andleader who founded Keio University. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern Japan.

19through firm friendship, and his tomb stands inconspicuously in Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo. He
was not allowed to return to the soil of his home country.
The source of the rumored rape of Queen Min’s corpse
The rumored rape of Queen Min’s corpse advocated by Kim Jin-myung has now taken a life of its
own and is regarded as a “fact.” This is an extremely serious situation. Stories depicting Imperial
Japanese atrociousness get adapted and exaggerated, like in a game of word relay and finally spreadthroughout the world as true. This is the regular pattern used in Korean anti-Japanese propaganda,
not to mention the case of the comfort women issue.
Mr. Nohira directly asked Mr. Kim Jin-myung about the credibility of “Telegram #435.” Mr. Kim
admitted that “Telegram #435” and its contents of his own imagination. But Mr. Kim insisted that hisstory of Queen Min’s body being raped was based on Ms. Tsunoda’s book, Assassination of Queen
Min. She also wrote the following: “Further, it is reported that some Japanese who were beside
Queen Min’s body committed acts too horrible for me as a fellow Japanese to describe. Ishizuka
Eizo, former councilor at the Legislation Bureau and interior advisor of the Korean Government
wrote about the matter in a report to the Legislation Bureau officer Suematsu Kanezumi. The report
started with a sentence ‘I truly regret to write about this,’ and concretely explained what wascommitted at the scene.” I suppose Mr. Kim referred to the above description when he said that his
basis for the violation of Queen Min’s body was based on Ms. Tsunoda. However, Ms. Tsunoda
herself did not mention anything regarding “the concrete act” in her book. Mr. Nohira wrote a letterto Ms. Tsunoda to confirm this. Ms. Tsunoda replied that there nothing of the kind, of “raping a deadbody,” was reported.

In later years, Mr. Nohira examined papers (related materials of the incidentof the Korean Queen, And letters of Ishizuka Eizo) at National Diet Library Constitution
Government Archives and found out that there was no mention of raping the dead Queen Min.

The following is the relevant part of the Ishizaka Report:“Curiosity-seeking crowds entered deep inside, pulled out the queen, jabbed at her in several places
using their swords and stripped her to the skin, examining the pubic region (laughing and roaring).
Last, they poured oil and burned her body—to watch the scene is unbearable. And the Minister of
the Imperial Household was said to be murdered by extremely cruel means. Or, perhaps, officers

14

Toyama Mitsuru (1855-1944) was a nationalist political leader in early 20th century Japan and founder of the
Genyosha nationalist secret society.

20helped. Mostly, soldiers and Japanese committed these murders.”

The above can be read as: [After the murder] Curiosity-seeking crowds rushed into the palace,
stripped Queen Min to the skin, examined her pubic region “amid laughers and roars,” poured oilover the body and then burned it.
There is no mention of raping a dead body. “Curiosity-seeking crowds” here may refer to Koreans.
The truth is that Korean crowds played with the hated dictatress’s body for grim pleasure. This
interpretation makes sense to a certain extent.
After all, author Kim Jin-myung fully used his extremely vulgar imagination regarding the “concretefact” which Ms. Tsunoda herself hesitated to write straightforwardly in her sympathetic book of
Queen Min and made up the story of “raping a dead body.” The following is the excerpt of“Telegram 435—raping Queen Min’s corpse” from Abduction of the Crown Princess, which Mr.
Nohira quotes in his book. Allow me to use this excerpt again here:
Political activists took off Queen Min’s underwear. One of them…Queen’s pubic region, somepolitical activists [how many of them is not known] took off their trousers, pulled out their penises
and …Queen’s beautiful whitish body…in front of the Queen’s body smeared with semen,
mercenariesshouted, “Banzai for the Imperial Japan!”

These are ghastly depictions–extreme thrill seekers and a type of pornography fit for the truly
depraved. Even if the author’s intention was to instigate a sense of victimization and amplify
readers’ anti-Japanese sentiment, the author’s sick imagination, of having the body of the Queen theycall the “people’s mother” raped after death leaves me totally speechless. Even if it is fictional, it isgrotesque beyond words, or perhaps it is so grotesque because it is fiction. Anyway, are we to saythat this is nothing more than a latent masochistic desire of the Korean people for Japan?

Japanese made to sit down on the ground before the tomb of Queen Min

In truth, many Korean anti-Japanese incidents are created in Japan.

Both An Jung-geun and Yi Sun-Shin were first overrated by the Japanese, then their overrated
praises went back to Korea, where they were further decorated and various merits were added andfinally they became anti-Japanese icons. Now, Queen Min is about to join the constellation. An
Jung-geun and Yi Sun-Shin are SK (Strong Korea) icons in that they struck back against hateful21Japan, while the “tragic Queen” is a CK (Chicken Korea) icon. The strongest icon Korea has madein collaboration with Japan is none other than the so-called “military comfort women.” In terms ofvictimized women, Queen Min belongs in the same category as the comfort women. There are “sexslaves” on one hand and “corpse raping” on the other.
There is a bizarre group of people called “Society for Meditating upon Empress Meisei.” The society
is said to consist of former and current teachers with the purpose of finding out the descendants of
the Japanese perpetrators of the assassination of Queen Min, studying related materials and records,
and investigating the truth about the murder. The society was formed in 2004, and since 2005, they
go to Korea on October 8, the anniversary of Queen Min’s death, every year to visit Queen Min’s
birthplace and her grave to express “apologies”.

In May 2005, invited by a Korean documentary production, the Society visited Korea, taking withthem a Japanese man and woman who are allegedly descendants of the perpetrators of Queen Min’s
murder (Japanese named Kunitomo Shigeaki and Ieiri Kakichi). The film crew shot scenes of thisJapanese couple sitting on the ground and apologizing. The scene was broadcast by TV Asahi’s news
program Hodo Station. I saw it myself and felt extremely nauseated. Arriving at the cemetery, thetwo Japanese “descendants” were met by a battery of cameras, focusing on them directly from thefront, with a clear intention of exposing the Japanese and making them look like criminals. The
setting was clearly predetermined. This is a sheer violation of their human rights.

Judging from the fact that the Japanese woman wore a cherry-blossom-colored kimono (formal
Japanese wear), it is possible that they were invited by the Society under the pretext of making
conciliation with descendants of Queen Min. A person claiming to be Queen Min’s great-grandchildarrogantly said to the Japanese couple, who were in tears, “To accept apology or not is not mybusiness. An apology should be made at the governmental level.” I felt very nauseous again
watching the scene. Koreans seem to be eager to make this matter another diplomatic issue.

Simply compare this case with that of the meeting between Ito Bunkichi and An Jung-sen I
mentioned earlier. These two cases, of face-to-face meetings, may have taken place under the
influence of politics. What a wide difference of impressions there are between Japan and Korea!
Among the Korean reporters who showered the two drooping Japanese with the shuttering of theircameras and their jeering, there may have been some who firmly believed that the two Japanese arehated descendants of the devils who raped the body of Queen Min.

Did their ancestors Kunitomo Shigeaki and Ieiri Kakichi really murder Queen Min? Kunitomo was a22

Pan-Asianist15 news reporter working in Korea, and he was accused of being an accessory in themurder of Queen Min and was imprisoned in Hiroshima, Japan. But he and Minister Miura were notprosecuted due to lack of evidence. As for Ieiri Kakichi, he supposedly taught Japanese in Korea. It
is totally unknown if he was involved at all in the incident. We should presume innocence until
proven otherwise. Besides, it all happened more than a hundred years ago. Moreover, even if they
were perpetrators, it is beyond Japanese sense to attribute their crime to their descendants. It wasprobably true that Minister Miura collaborated with anti-Queen Min groups behind the scenes with
the intention of rebuking Queen Min. It was quite reasonable for the minister to foresee that if Queen
Min was allowed to do as she liked, then, sooner or later, Korea would surely be swallowed up by
Russia.

Who, then, rejected Queen Min on behalf of Korea? Kim Ok-kyun was among them, though he waskilled before fulfillment of his wishes. Also, former military men who were abandoned by Queen
Min were angry. The person who hated Queen Min most was none other than Daewong-gun—but hewas not the only one. Queen Min was the target of outrage of all the Korean people, who faced
extortion under Queen Min’s rule. The assassination of Queen Min was a critical historical event,taking place as various, complicated vectors of the time converged.

In a modern sense, assassination is never permissible. However, there were times in history when
only extreme means, such as assassinations, could jolt the world into moving forward.

Both Ito Hirobumi and Queen Min lost their lives by assassination. However, it may take the Korean
people a considerable amount of time for them to decide which assassination served them or who
were truly devoted to the cause of the Korean people.

I believe that absolute evil does not exist in history. I pray that Queen Min rests in peace in my heart.
However, it is not a good idea to make Queen Min a saint.

Is Japan hated because Japan did not trample Korea?—A Paradoxical
view of the history of Japan’s colonial control
Japan did not trample Korea

15

Pan-Asianism is an ideology that promotes the unity of Asian peoples. Several Pan-Asian theories and movements
have been espoused, especially from East, South and Southeast Asia. Pre-World War II Japanese Pan-Asianism was,at its core, the idea that Asia should unite against European imperialism.

23

Mr. Kurayama Mitsuru, a scholar of the history of constitutional government, made the following
statement, entitled Imperial Japan fell because Japan treated the Koreans as human beings, in theInternet-version of the Weekly SPA, Daily SPA, dated November 22, 2013.
“The assassination of Ito Hirobumi foolishly committed by An Jung-geun triggered Japan’s
Annexation of Korea. In the first place, Japan was not qualified to have a colony. And why not? Thiswas because Japan was so naïve as to treat Koreans as human beings…To begin with, what is acolony, ? It is a place for exploitation. Were there resources to be exploited in the Korean Peninsula?
No, there was nothing. In the land without resources, Japan earnestly endeavored to spread acurrency-based economy, civilize society and develop infrastructure. These things were pursued
with passionate commitment… As a result, Japan was to confront the Republic of China, to make it
protect the rights of Koreans, who were Imperial Japan’s subjects. The struggle developed into the
Manchurian Incident (1931) and further expanded into the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937). Japanwas deeply involved in the management of the Chinese continent, which led to national destruction.”

Both the title and contents are shocking. When I read this, I agree with his view. I would like to add
my own view in addition to those of Mr. Kurayama’s:“To rule the Koreans, terror and high-pressured governance is needed. Force them to sit down on the
ground and bend their heads, and tread over their heads with full weight.”
Some readers might say, “What an awful thing to say!” or “Are you a racist?” Well, I agree with you.
Surely, my words are “awful.” However, hearing such criticism, I don’t flinch, but rather I feel happy.
Why? You feel my words “awful,” because I think you are full of kindness and a sense of morality,
which are truly Japanese national traits. And I want to say that yours is the standard view of theJapanese. I truly want to be one of the Japanese people.
Japan did not carry out “fear-ridden rule”. Japan was not able to use terrorism in the light ofJapanese mentality and sense of morality. Newly accepting Koreans as their fellow citizens andcompanion, Japan treated Koreans as equally as possible with the Japanese people of mainland Japan.
Japan provided the Koreans with education, completed its infrastructure and established publichygiene and all because of this, Japan is hated. This is not at all a paradox or ironic. Because Japan
did not imbue the Korean minds with terror, the Koreans were able to safely assert anti-Japanesepolicies against Japan after World War II. In other words, Japan’s rule over Korea failed.
On the other hand, each Chinese dynasty, fully aware of the Korean people’s character (veiled24masochism), ruled Korea without fault. The Chinese tread over the heads of Koreans, with full force,
making them sit down and to bow to the ground. Then, with thoroughly imbued terrorism, China, as
a master state, made the Koreans appreciate China’s superiority in body and soul. China’s approach
was like sports training. The Japanese people, with the culture of cultivation, did not have a very
concept of training. That is to say, the Japanese people have never been able to become totallysadistic to other peoples.
“Independence Gate” and “Grateful Reception Gate”
A gate made of piled granite stands in Seodaemon Park in Seoul. The gate is called “IndependenceGate.” In recent years, many Korean young people have wrongly thought that the gate was amonument built to commemorate independence from Japan. In fact, the gate was built in 1887 as awish for independence from Qing China, which was finally realized after Japan won the
Sino-Japanese War, and the Qing signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki16 (Article 1 confirms that Korea
is independent of the Qing). That is, Korean independence was achieved with the blood of Japaneseyouths.

Well, I wonder how many of Korean youths know that there used to be a gate called the Gate of
Grateful Reception at the same place before the Independence Gate was built? What kind of gate
was it? The gate was used by the Korean King to welcome the Qing’s mission in a most reverential
manner, following Chinese etiquette between subjects and their masters—bowing one’s head, almost
hitting the ground, three times and repeating the routine three times, namely, sitting on the groundand kowtowing (bowing deeply) nine times. This might be remotely understandable if the King of
Korea is to pay respect to the Emperor of Qing as a servant. However, the reception given here is fora mere “messenger” of the Emperor. It is as if the president of an affiliate is made to bow down on
the ground to an employee from the parent company. Still, humiliation felt by the Korean King musthave been far greater, beyond comparison.

It was said that among such messengers were Koreans who were promoted to serve as Chinese
eunuchs, serving the Emperor’s harem or at the Empress’s Palace of the Qing Dynasty. Korea, being
extremely underdeveloped, was unable to send a tribute that could satisfy the great Qing Empire. So,
all they could do was to send beautiful Korean boys and girls to Qing as tribute. Beautiful girls werechosen from among yangban (officials) families. This custom of “tribute girls” was followed not

16

Article 1: China recognizes definitively the full and complete independence and autonomy of Korea, and, inconsequence, the payment of tribute and the performance of ceremonies and formalities by Korea to China, that are inderogation of such independence and autonomy, shall wholly cease for the future.

25

only by the Qing, but also by all Chinese dynasties that Korea paid tribute to. The history of Korea
can be described as one in which wives (lovers) are actively “stolen”, offered to other peoples. On
the other hand, boys were castrated and sent to Qing to serve as eunuchs. A eunuch comes to Korea,
his home country, as an Imperial messenger.

The King sent a young castrated boy to a foreign land as tribute. Now, the eunuch sees that the kingkneels at his feet—how did the King or the homeland that once deserted him as a young boy look to
the eunuch? Imagine how the Korean King felt, bowing his head down on the ground and showing
his utmost respect to a mere eunuch.
“Eunuchs from Korea, using their status of an Imperial messenger of the master state, pressured the
Korean King and demanded bribes. There was a eunuch from Koryo named Wan Quantzoto who had
his elder brother Ko-ju appointed to a high office and also had six hundred and thirty-four of his
relatives become officials. Some demanded that their home prefectures be promoted. Others
blackmailed the Korean King and made extraordinary demands of him. Thus, eunuchs exerted great
influence over Korean politics.” (Korea, Unable to Recover, written by Ko Bunyu and published by
Kobun-sha.)

Readers will see that castrated Koreans who became Chinese officers are seen as having a far higher
position than the King of Korea.

Thus, the Chinese dynasties ruled Korea by making Koreans feel totally humiliated, treading overthe heads of sitting Koreans and forcing them to bow to the ground.

Japan had no intention of abolishing the Joseon Dynasty
Koreans usually do not hesitate to say that the thirty-six years of Japan’s Annexation of Korea were
under the “harshest colonial rule that has no parallel in all of human history.” It may sound quite
literary, but so long as Koreans say, “no likes of it in all of human history,” one would think thatJapan demanded far more humiliating duties from the Korean King and ministers than China did. At
least, this is what people outside of Japan and Korea would believe it if they just hear Korea’s.

However, the facts are completely different. No Japanese person, including the Emperor Meiji, thefirst Japanese Resident-General of Korea17, Ito Hirobumi, and the first Governor-General of Korea,

17

From 1906 to 1910, the Korean Empire became a protectorate of Japan and Japan was represented by a
Resident-General in the Korean Empire. Terauchi was the third and the last resident-general. Upon the annexation of26

Terauchi Masatake, demanded Chinese-style formalities of kneeling on the ground and kowtowing
nine times from Korean King Gojong or his heir Sunjong, who was later enthroned. Far from that,Japan had Imperial Prince Yi Un, who had been chosen as Sunjong’s heir, study in Japan and marry amember of the Imperial Family, Princess Nashimoto-no-miya Masako, who was once favored as aconsort for Emperor Showa. Thus, Japan treated the Korean dynasty as a relative of the JapaneseImperial Family. This took place at such time as when a country fell under another’s rule--it was
regularly the conquered dynasty’s fate to be eliminated completely, root and branch, or to have theirleader executed.
Of course, I don’t mean to say that Japan’s rule over Korea was without fault. There may have been
inconsiderate policies that hurt the Korean people’s pride. There may have been pompous officers
who did nothing but rant. The marriage of Prince Yi Un was certainly political in nature. However, it
is an indisputable fact that the aim of Japanese rule was neither elimination of the Korean people nor
the fall of the Korean dynasty.
Japan’s Annexation of Korea was different from European colonial rule

In Korea, in 2005, an infamous law targeting Koreans who supported Japan came into effect. The
official name of the law is “Special law to redeem pro-Japanese collaborators' property”. In Article 1,
PURPOSE, reads: “By putting under the State ownership assets which had been accumulated byanti-Korean, pro-Japanese Koreans who cooperated with the Imperial Japan’s colonial rule andoppressed our people, justice shall realize and the people’s spirit shall rise.” In gist, assets are to be
confiscated from descendants of those who accumulated a certain amount of assets, cooperating inpolicies of Japan and Korean Governor-General’s Office during Japan’s Annexation of Korea.
Needless to say, this law conflicts with principles of modern laws that prohibit retroactive law andguild by association. The one who promoted passage of this law was President Roh Moo-hyun, who
was a lawyer. This fact clearly indicates the backwardness of that country. The President himself
proved that Korea is not a law-abiding country. A witch-hunt, like that of the Middle Ages, hasbegun in a neighboring country.
The concept of “pro-Japanese Koreans” mentioned here is defined in Article 2, Paragraph 1 as: “Wehereby define pro-Japanese Koreans as those who concluded, signed or deliberated treaties, such as
The Treaty of the Annexation of Korea to Japan, that infringe our sovereignty; Korean nobles; those
who were active in the House of Nobles or the House of Representatives; vice-chairman of the

Korea to Japan, he became the Governor-General of Korea.

27

central office (inquiry organ of the Korean Governor-General’s Office); or State Councilors, all ofwhom are considered as greatly pro-Japanese.” Those who were titled or became Diet members werelabeled “pro-Japanese” and were judged as such. In February 2014, the Korean Court ruled that thedescendant of Yi Hesun, who held the title of marquis during the Annexation period, pay all profits
gained through land transactions to the Treasury. Plaintiff was a governmental organization called“The investigative committee of assets of perpetrators of pro-Japanese, anti-national activities.” Thiscan be considered a present-day Inquisition.

Aside from this law and the bizzare Korean judiciary, take heed of the fact that during theAnnexation, Korean people were able to obtain Japanese titles and enter the nobility and be elected
into the Diet. If this was the very nature of “the harshest rule that has no parallel in all of humanhistory,” then we should have Indian British royals or an African French President as well.

Class and discrimination

Britain, an old hand in colonial management, was adept at using divide and conquer. For example,
when the British Empire colonized Malay Peninsula, the British did not directly rule, but they had
Indians and Chinese merchants abroad settle there and had them control the Malays. This was very
cunning of them in that the grievance of ruled Malays was directed toward the immediate rulers,
Indians and Chinese, but not toward Britain herself.

Would history have fared better if Japan had had Taiwanese, Manchurians, Chinese merchantsabroad or Polynesians settle in Korea and had them rule the Koreans, instead of having the Koreansestablish an autonomous government? Perhaps the Korean people’s han (grudge) would not havebeen directed toward us Japanese. Japan’s rule would not have been criticized for being “the harshest
rule that has no parallel in all of human history.” By now, Japan and Korea would be the friendliest
neighbors in Asia.

In addition, Britain cunningly used tribal conflicts within colonial policy. Thus, while tribal conflicts
turned the local peoples’ grievances inwardly, toward each other, this also served to prevent local
tribes from uniting and revolting against Britain.

African countries, even today, are beset with tribal conflicts and civil wars, mainly due to policies
employed by Whites during their rule are effectively still working there. And Whites continue tomake much money by selling arms to each tribe in conflict-ridden Africa. Recently, China has joinedin their war-mongering scheme. It is also said that conflicts among respective strata of caste in India
28

became worse during the period of British rule.

Korea is a thoroughly class-based society, with the yangban noble class at the top and has been
traditionally plagued with regional conflicts since the ancient period of the Three Kingdoms (Silla,
Baekje and Goguryeo). The ruling Korean Governor-General’s Office must have fully known thesituation, but they did not have the wisdom to use it in their favor.

Let me explain the Korean class system. During the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897), there was a very
strict class distinction in Korea, which went, from the top, yangban, upper-middle-class, ordinary
citizens and servants. The actual ruling class was the yangban, which refers to the male lineage of
those families who passed the Keju (official examination) for entry into either the literary field or the
military field. There were two groups of civil servants and officers and therefore both groups werecalled yangban.

In official ceremonies, the King faced south, and facing the King, civil officials sat to the right (east)and officers sat to the left (west). They were also called dongban and xiban, respectively. Both civil
servants and officers seemed to be equal in status, but, in fact, officers were far inferior to civil
servants. Traditionally, it was believed that reading and being absorbed in empty discussions were
the true calling for noble people. The Korean trend of undue emphasis on literature (civil servants)
and almost no emphasis on the military (officer) directly corresponds to their latent sense of disdain
against Japan. As readers may well know, in Japan, samurai had long been a part of the ruling class.
The Meiji Government was practically run by local samurai groups called Saccho (Satsuma andChoshu, presently Kagoshima and Yamaguchi Prefectures). With this fact alone, Korea regards Japan
as barbarous—a country where the people forget the pen and are ruled by the sword.

In the keju examination, there was another miscellaneous category, aside from literary and militaryarts. Miscellany referred to special knowledge, not relevant to the two types of arts—practicalstudies including medicine, astronomy, and foreign languages (Chinese and Japanese), which are
specialized skills. The class that produced most of those who passed this category were theupper-middle-class, who were positioned between yangban and ordinary citizens in social status.
Though their official rank was low, they were able to engage in official work. The ordinary citizens
were farmers, craftsmen and merchants. The lowest class was slave, lacking in basic human rights,
and they were traded for money. Their life or death was totally up to the owner. Korea during theJoseon Dynasty was a typical slave-based class society. Without their existence, menial labor would
not have been performed. Outside of these strata, there were people called the Baekjeong(untouchables), who were equivalent to segregated villagers seen in Japan. They were engaged in29slaughtering animals, selling meat, tanning, bamboo crafting, and served as undertakers. While they
were segregated socially, they were exempt from the obligation of paying taxes. They were treated in
the same manner as their Japanese counterparts. They were placed at the bottom of the social
hierarchy, but it is more appropriate to say that they were placed outside the class system.
Japan introduced the Japanese principle of equality for all people in Korea, a pre-modern
class-dominated state, and liberated slaves and the baekjeong. Opening the door to learning, which
had long been monopolized by yangban and middle-class people, Japan spread primary education
across Korea.

It seems that these endeavors worked against Japan. This is one of the reasons why Japan is still
hated by Korea, being accused of having exercised “the harshest colonial rule that has no parallel inall of human history.” Rather, to bring the concept of equality for all during colonial rule must havebeen an experiment “that has no parallel in all of human history.” And this experiment ended up in
sheer failure. Those who hate Japan of the Annexation period most are former yangban, who were
stripped of various privileges under Japan’s policy of equality for all. President Syngman Rhee, wholaunched the Republic of Korea with the “anti-Japanese” state policy, was from the yangban.

Riddling comfort women issue from any point of view

One of the deepest-rooted issues that lie between Japan and Korea is the comfort women issue.

In recent years, Korea has been strategically working to change this from a bilateral issue to aninternational one. Korean built comfort women statues and monuments can be found across America,
using Korean residents and students studying in the U.S. to plant them. Korea entered many comic
books depicting comfort women at the Festival international de la band dessinee d’Angouleme inFrance. Korea publicly announced that they would apply for registration of the comfort women to
the UNESCO Memory of the World. These movements clearly show that the comfort women issue
has entered into a new phase. In dealing with this phase, Japan remains totally defensive.
Korean and Japanese sympathizers assert: “The Japanese military, in cooperation with governmental
officials, abducted innocent Korean girls by force or using honeyed words throughout the Korean
Peninsula, and took them to comfort stations set up in various places and made them sexually service
soldiers there after; many of the girls were gang-raped in the process.” They condemn the Japanese
Government for its failure to offer compensation or an official apology. Korea claims the number offorced comfort women is two hundred thousand. I can definitively say that their claims nothing but
lies.
30

In 1944, the population of the Korean Peninsula was about twenty million. Supposing that the half ofthe population were females, there were ten million women. This number includes babies and older
women. Then, suppose that women between 15 to 30 are eligible to work as prostitutes and roughly
half of the total female population are in this age range (15-30), we get five million women. Korea
claims two hundred thousand women out of five million were forcibly abducted and made military
sex slaves. One out of twenty-five, in a case of a school, one or two girls in a class suddenly became
missing as if by divine intervention. It is extremely puzzling that there was not a witness’ record or
testimony available regarding such incidents of missing women. At that time, most police officers
were Koreans. Why, then, did they fail to investigate the mysterious disappearances of so many
young women?

Conquering by getting the conquered women pregnant with children of the conquerors

Now, a different story: between 1947 and 1948, Japanese soldiers abroad returned home to Japan ingreat numbers. What sights caught their eyes and made them bitter when they returned home aliveand stepped on the homeland? The vast, scorched land, starving children, signs everywhere reading“OFF LIMITS”—all these must have been heartbreaking. In my opinion, I think what shocked themthe most was the presence of streetwalkers, “pan-pan girls.”18

When they returned, the Japanese maidens who had sent them off as soldiers going to war, waving
small rising-sun flags, as good wives of soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army, now wore gorgeous
red lipstick, spoke broken American and hung to the arms of American soldiers, once their enemies.
When Japanese men faced this harsh reality, they could not help but to recognize it and accept it;
totally helpless. The bad luck of being divested of their own women by conquerors has a great
psychological impact.

A rumor arose around that time—General Douglas MacArthur, General Headquarters, the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers, fell in love with Hara Setsuko, the most popular Japanese actressat the time and she became his mistress most unwillingly, for the sake of her country. Regarding thisstory, the late Mr. Kato Koichi, a social and cultural critic, wrote in his book, History of Showa
Scandals (Hanashi no Tokushu): “It was a demagogy born out of the spirit of little resistance ofpeople who were harassed both tangibly and intangibly by the highest power of the time.” Speakingof Hara Setsuko, she was a nationally famous, top actress, dubbed the “eternal maiden.” She was theideal image of a Japanese woman. Then, she was made a mistress of the head of the Occupation
18“Pan-pan” refers to sexual intercourse in military slang.

31Forces. The “spirit of resistance” must have been quite refracted to a defeated nation. On the other
hand, I was told by an older person who lived through the days under military occupation that there
was truth to a rumor that had: Japanese men who rebelled against GHQ (General Headquarter, theSupreme Commander for the Allied Powers) were all taken to Okinawa and had their testicles pulledout.” These two urban legends should be considered as a set.

Rob women of their virginity and castrate men. Rob men of different nations of their reproductive
ability and plant the conquerors’ seed into the women. Thus, over a long span of time, diminish the Y
chromosome of the conquered nation and assimilate with the conquerors. This is how the conqueror
rules the conquered, and this fear is not a fabrication when we think of what is presently happeningin Tibet and Uighur. Now in the 21st century, under a policy of the Chinese Communist Party, many
Tibetan women have been forcibly moved to inland China to marry Chinese men there. In the caseof a Tibetan husband and wife, when the wife becomes pregnant, she is forced to have an abortion.
As punishment for certain crimes, young people are sterilized. If things go on unchanged, in lessthan fifty years, it is said that pure-blooded Tibetans will disappear from the face of the earth. It ishorrible beyond words. In Uighur Autonomous Region, the same kinds of things are going on.

Battleground and rape

The method of domination by getting the conquered women pregnant with the children of theconquerors and producing half-bloods was most frequently used by the Spanish. During the Age of
Exploration or organized maritime exploration of the world by Europeans in the 15th and 16th
centuries, Spain invaded many parts of South America on the pretext of saving souls for Christ andleft many mestizo or half-bloods, between Spaniards and the local natives. Mestizos formed the
middle stratum of the ruling structure and monopolized many important government posts, putting
pure-blooded natives below them. To mestizos, the ruling Spaniards were at the head of the lineage
and it was fundamentally implausible for mestizos to rebel against the Spaniards. This system can besaid to utilize dived and conquer in a different manner.
To plant one’s own Y chromosome into conquered women, putting aside whether this is ethicallyright or wrong, is probably a behavior that is instinctive or unconscious. For example, for pygmy
chimpanzees, which are supposedly second to humans in intelligence among the animals, when a
new boss arises among the troop, the new boss attacks the old boss’ female chimpanzees and bites
the infant chimpanzees (the old boss’s children) which bleed to death in front of the entire troop.
Females, seeing their children killed, become sexually aroused at the sight of rushing blood andbegin copulating with the new boss, instead of getting angry over the bloody sight. (Current Monkey
32

Studies, written by Tachibana Takashi, published by Heibon-sha.)

A similar type of infanticide is also seen with lions.

In the case of humans, it is on the battleground that such primitive reproductive impulses mostfrequently appear. That is probably why in wartime and during following occupation, incidents ofrape frequently occur. In fact, during the Vietnam War, wherever Korean soldiers went, it wasreported that there were many cases of rape, arson, infanticide and even the killing of fetuses by
cutting open the mother’s womb. Korean soldiers during war-time revert to pygmy chimpanzees.

Similar incidents took place in Manchuria, North Korea and Sakhalin immediately after the end ofWorld War II. There were many cases of rape and murder of female Japanese residents in these areas
by Koreans who became the cat’s paws of Russian soldiers. Futsukaichi Health Care Center atFutsukaichi-cho, Chikushi-gun, Fukuoka Prefecture was a medical facility where women who had
been raped by Russian or Korean soldiers and returned home to Japan secretly had abortions ortreatment for venereal diseases. Now, a small zizo shrine in memory of the aborted fetuses stands atthe site of the facility.
The same was true of the situation in mainland Japan. Koreans, self-proclaimed “victors” banded
together and committed various criminal acts including rape, taking advantage of the lack of police.

The Korean people seemed to become totally sadistic once they realized that they are dealing withthe weak. However, when they are dealing with the strong, they submit in a masochistically servile
manner. It is no exaggeration to say that they have an extremely peculiar mentality. The Chinese
devised their way of ruling the Koreans with terror after the Chinese fully comprehended the Koreanmentality. To Koreans, the Japanese spirit of wa (peaceful harmony) or concept of equality means
nothing to them other than ”weakness” or “surrender.” Korea might have thought it would be easy tokill Japan in her sleep in the name of revenge over Japan’s long-term rule of Korea, if only an
opportunity arose.

Rape and massacre date back to the time of the Bible

Whoops, I should be careful here. It may be misleading if I say that only Korean people are cruel,
merciless rapists and murderers. I don’t want to be called a racist myself. In this regard, I’d like toshow you the words from Moses in the Book of Numbers from The Old Testament. By the way, aprophet is a person who conveys words of God, that is, a kind of shaman:33

Now, then, you shalt kill all boys among these children and kill all women that slept with men andknew men. However, you shalt let live all maidens who have not yet slept with men and not yet
known men for yourselves. (Numbers, 31:17-18)

Similarly, in Judges:

Go to Jabesh-gilead and strike all inhabitants there, including women and children, with swords.
Then you shalt do like this. You shalt annihilate all men and all women that have slept with men.
(Judges, 21:10-12)

Here, God orders the people of Judea to annihilate foreigners (heathens) in battle. God orders themto root out all men, grown-ups and children alike, and to kill women who have “known” men.
Non-maidens could bear their children with the “wrong” Y chromosome, and, therefore, they must
be annihilated. As for maidens, God benevolently instructs them to take the maidens as trophies andenjoy those maidens to their heart’s content. Then, later, during the 11th to 13th centuries, theCrusades were organized to save the Holy Land and they faithfully followed God’s providence. They
killed, usurped and raped. In the history of war, these things are repeated, over and over again.

Nevertheless, in modern wars, massacre and rape of civilians are grave war crimes, regardless of any
reason perpetrators cite to as justification. It’s an undeniable fact that the system of comfort stations
played a role of restraining potential sex crimes. On August 30, Douglas MacArthur landed at Atsugi
Air Base outside Tokyo and the Allied occupation of Japan began. In U.S. military-related records,
within a mere ten days after MacArthur’s arrival, 1,336 cases of rape of Japanese women by
American soldiers occurred. (The U.S. Army documented over twenty thousand rapes in theEuropean front.)

GHQ (General Headquarters) was so embarrassed that they requested theJapanese Government to set up the RAA (Recreation and Amusement Association). Half-bloods
created between American soldiers and Japanese women, whether victims of rape or as a result of
prostitution, became a serious social problem.
A question naturally arises: Suppose that “the harshest colonial rule that has no parallel in all of
human history” was implemented, would it not be true that a great number of children with their
Japanese fathers’ chromosomes would be left on the Korean Peninsula? Regarding this question, theKorean Government has not produced any witnesses, let alone started an investigation. Isn’t thisstrange?

34

In reality, during Japan’s annexation period, the Japanese Government and the Governor-General’s
Office, under the slogan of “Unite Japan and Korea into One,” encouraged intermarriage between
Japanese in mainland Japan and Koreans. However, this attempt was not very successful. Japanese
may have given a wide berth to having Korean spouses or vice versa. In factuality, marriages
between Japanese and Koreans were limited in number.
I found an interesting article in Asahi Graph of December 29, 1953. The magazine’s feature wascoverage of Japanese fishermen who were detained at a Pusan detention center after they were
captured for allegedly crossing the Syngman Rhee Line19. The article also mentioned briefly that
there was another building accommodating nearly six hundred mothers and children. They wereJapanese women who had married Koreans and remained in Korea with their children. Their Koreanhusbands had been killed in the Korean War (1950-53). They wanted to return to Japan, but the
Korean Government detained them and kept them there in a ghetto-like facility. Regrettably, I don’tknow whether they were allowed to go to Japan. I would like to add something here. It was Mrs. Yi
Masako, wife of Imperial Prince Yi Un, mentioned earlier in this chapter, who organized theJapanese Women’s Society in Korea after World War II and tirelessly supported and encouraged
those widowed Japanese wives, who were never able to return home to Japan. Throughout Japan’srule of Korea, far from leaving Japanese Y chromosomes in Korea, in the cases of intermarriages,
couples that had a Korean husband and a Japanese wife far outnumbered other couples. This is anextremely rare case in colonial history.

Inside and outside of Kisaeng sightseeing and the Korean-style boom

Mr. Kim Chi-ha, a leading Korean anti-regime poet, is well known for having been imprisoned manytimes, for advocating the democratization of Korea during Pak Chong-hui’s military administration.
Mr. Kim wrote a long poem entitled The Tale Mr. Excrement (1974). The poem goes something like
this: A Japanese group comes to Korea on a Kisaeng sightseeing tour. The leader of the group climbs
up on the top of the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin in Seoul and releases volumes of feces right there,
and the man himself ends up being swallowed up by a pool of his own feces. The poem is full ofjokes.

Kisaeng is, of course, a Korean geisha and here refers to a professional woman who entertains men
at night, which includes sex. The Pak Chong-hui military regime set up a public-run Kisaeng house
19

Syngman Rhee Line refers to a marine boundary line established by South Korean President Syngman Rhee in his“Peace Line” declaration of January 18, 1952, establishing a wide area of maritime sovereignty, beyond
internationally accepted territorial waters, around the entire Korean Peninsula. After many tragic incidents occurred
over the line, it was abolished by the approval of Japan-Korea Fishery Agreement in 1965.

35

as a visitor resource, aiming to earn foreign currency to revive the totally exhausted domestic
economy after the Korean War. Plainly speaking, they were public servants working as prostitutes.
And their major customers were Japanese tourists. It may be unbelievable in recent years whenfemale fashion magazines feature attractive tours of Korea, but it is no exaggeration to say that only
two decades ago, a trip to Korea was almost synonymous for “sex-tour” for vulgar middle-aged orolder Japanese men. Although the aim was to gain foreign currency, it would have been unbearable
to accept the fact that Korean women had sex with Japanese men for money. The business waspromoted by the state of Korea. This complex state of mind appears in the description of a Japanese
man releasing feces over the statue of Korean hero Admiral Yi Sun-Shin. I perceive the quite
un-Korean, somewhat sadistic bitter-sweet humor in the poem. At the same time, the Japanese manhimself ends up dead amid his own feces. On Mr. Kim’s part, he must have felt a certain satisfaction
there. I also feel that there is instinctive resistance among Korean women to having sex with foreign
men for money. It may be interesting to compare this with the previously mentioned widespreadrumor about Japanese actress Hara Setsuko.

A surplus male population in Korea

The Korean male-female population ratio is very distorted. At present, according to statistics, nearly
19.6 % of male population do not have marriage opportunities. (Stated by the Gyeonggi Province
Research Institute on Family and Women.) Japan, too, has long been said to be a society with asurplus male population. However, Japan’s surplus rate has never exceeded 9%, so, the Korean rateis extraordinary.
In recent years, Korea has boasted of being a quasi-advanced country with her GDP ranking 15th in
the world. At the same time, as is usual with advanced countries, the problems of late marriage andfewer children have become apparent since at least over ten years ago. In Korean society, “magmaand summa” have been placed on one’s educational background and only graduates of the four major
Universities of Seoul, Yonsei, Korea, Sungkyunkwan, and Ewha Woman’s University for women getjobs (now, even for graduates from these universities, it is not so easy to get jobs). It costs muchmoney for parents to give their child a good education to enter the elite universities. It is a popular
trend to acquire English conversation skills and families with financial advantages, if any, are eager
to have their children learn English conversation as early as in early childhood. It is a shared dreamof middle-class Koreans to have their children study abroad in future and, if possible, to have themobtain American or Canadian citizenship, hoping that their children will eventually invite them tolive abroad together. As things are today, it is practically impossible for Koreans to have three orfour children, unless they are very wealthy.
36Besides financial problems, there are more headaches for Koreans. Based on deep-rooted Confucian
culture, if the husband is the eldest son, his parents will half-menacingly oblige the couple to have a
son as an heir. When the wife becomes pregnant for the first time, if they find out that it is a girl, in
most cases, she is urged by her in-laws, both explicitly and implicitly, to get an abortion. In fact,
Korea is a major pro-abortion country. Thus, countless female babies are gone before they are born,which results in the present distorted male-female population ratio.

My view is that the true nature of the Korean-style boom is that it is a state policy aiming at
providing Korean men with Japanese women. The kisaeng sightseeing tour was a sad state policy.
And in revenge for the humiliating memory of having Japanese men make love to Korean womenfor money, the Koreans came up with a new state policy of producing a Korean-style boom in Japan,
which is worthy of their newly obtained status as a quasi-advanced country. Among young Koreanmen, “to erect Taegeukgi (Korean national flag)” is slang for having sex with a Japanese woman.

The Culture of castration is nonexistent in Japan
Recently, I heard the expression “herbivorous boys,” referring to young Japanese males. During therecent Korean-style boom, this expression was used very frequently, as in a context such as: “Koreanmales who are positive and passionate in everything are far more attractive than herbivorous
Japanese males.”Certainly, the Japanese people have been herbivorous from ancient times, judging from the historicalfact that Japan was never able to adopt the dominant style of killing and raping occupied people,
based on the logic of blood and lineage. For that matter, Japan should be proud of being herbivorous,
instead of being ashamed of it. It is quite one-sided to conclude that herbivores are weak and areprey to predators. It is not easy for the lion or leopard to single-handedly kill an elephant or arhinoceros. Mighty gorillas are herbivorous, too.
There has been no culture of castration in Japan. It is said that during Japan’s Warring States Period20
what amazed a Jesuit missionary who came to Japan was that there were no castrated bulls or horses
in Japan. Some argue that this fact is the very refutation against the theory that Japan was conquered
by a horse-riding race, for there is no way for a horse-riding race to survive without the knowledge

20

The Onin War (1467-1477), after which the shogunate no longer had much authority over the daimyo (feudallords), marked the beginning of the Warring States Period. It lasted over a century until the reunification process wascompleted by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590.

37

of castration. During the Edo Period (1603-1868), there was a harem called O-Oku (inner palace),but there was not a single eunuch in O-Oku. The Japanese people had no idea of castrating domestic
animals, let alone humans.

On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, tribute girls and eunuchs were very important tributes for
Korea to regularly send to each Chinese dynasty. Korea has a disgraceful history of sending thedaughters of yangban families as comfort women and castrated men to their master State of China.

What propels men to fightIn times of war, what stirs up men and makes them take up arms is fear and absolute anger at thethought that their enemies may come to rape their women–wives, daughters, and sisters. This instinct
cannot be fully explained in terms of nationalism. It is part of the male instinct. Both carnivores andherbivores have the same instinct.

The French national anthem La Marseillaises, one of the most belligerent national anthems in theworld, clearly indicates this. This song was originally a war song for the French Revolutionary
Government fighting a war against Austria.

Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras

Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes! (They come to your arms andslit the throats of your sons and your wives!)
By the way, “egorger” is a verb, meaning to slaughter domestic animals by cutting the throat, tobutcher, or to kill like insects. “To kill” is simply “tuer”, but “egorger” is many times far crueler.
Then, the song moves on to the famous refrain.

Aux arms, citoyens, Formez vos batallions, Marchons, marchons! (Take arms, citizens, Form yourbattalion, March, March!)
Qu’un sang impur, Abreuve nos sillons (Their impure blood imbues our furrows.)
There is a phrase, namely, “war and peace.” However, I think it a little incongruous to put “peace” asreverse of “war.” Equally, I have mixed feelings about the words “love and peace.” Love and peace
are not at all synonyms. There may be a few cases where love can keep conflicts away. However,almost all conflicts over human matters—lethal fighting and wars—are brought by love. There is
love, and therefore, there are wars. The origin lies, as I just said, in the instinct to protect one’s wife,
daughters, and females of the tribe from invaders (males of other tribes). To pursue this to the core, it
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is the instinct to protect one’s chromosome and pass it on to the future.

Let me repeat this. We are kept alive by the instinct to keep our own chromosome intact and to pass
it on to the future. Suppose a certain people had as many as two hundred thousand of their women
abducted, but they failed to rise in a riot. It would not be too much to say that the people might aswell be extinct at that very moment. Biologically, they no longer have a raison d’etre. That’s how
natural selection takes place.

Women who slept with the enemy

With France, after Paris was liberated from the Germans in August 1944, prostitutes who slept withGermans, women who bore German children, and an actress who supposedly had an affair with aGerman officer and the like were brought before a mob and, one after another, they had their heads
saved and rocks were thrown at them. The peoples’ disgust of their women, “who slept with theenemy” went to such extremes.

The Korean dynasties, instead of protecting their own women, surrendered under the Chinese Armyand offered their women, in order to survive. Quite contrary to angry French citizens who threw
rocks at prostitutes who serviced German soldiers, Korea keeps throwing curses at the Japanese
Government and the Japanese people, not at the comfort women who earned much money working
for the Japanese Army. (Of course, I don’t mean to say that we should throw rocks at comfort
women.)The people who had failed to work for their own women came to throw their pent-up frustration overtheir miserable history at Japan, interwoven with anti-Japanese thinking—this is exactly what the
comfort women issue is about. Besides, I can definitively say that Korean anti-Japanese thoughts andactions derive from the sentiment which should have been directed toward their former ruler, China,
or the Joseon Dynasty and yangban, or from insolvent liabilities called “ham.” But all of these werechanged to wrongly hold Japan responsible.
To rape women and make them bear the conqueror’s children and to castrate men and usethem—Japan did not follow the manner of colonial rule by carnivorous cultures of the Whites andthe Chinese, and for this very reason, Japan is still blamed by Korea now, seventy years after WorldWar II ended. Japan failed to rule Korea. Colonial rule without fear and humiliation is nothing.

Well, I may have overstated this. In ruling other peoples, pleasure is an indispensable factor besides
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fear. It’s a sweet, maddening pleasure of opium. To sell narcotic and turn the ruled into cripples is themost effective and profitable way of colonial control that humankind has ever devised. That waswhat the Great British Empire, the most skilled colonial management expert, did.

At the beginning of the Meiji Period, Japan, a debutant in international society, was a green horn hotwith sweet notions such as “the world is one family.” Japan followed the Great British Empire as amodel of modern constitutional monarchy. However, Japan was not eager enough to learn how to run
a colony effectively.
As Mr. Kurayama pointed out, it is reasonable to say that Japan was not “qualified to have a colony.”
And that is why Japan’s rule of Korea is called “the worst colonial rule that has no parallel in all of
human history.”

And I am so proud of Japan for that.

Conclusion
The Korean people never once fail to condemn Japan, using the almighty phrase “historical
recognition”. However, to me, Koreans blushingly urging Japan to share the same HISTORICAL
RECOGNITION which looks like a bunch of naïve boys.

During the existence of Naver, the Internet Korean-Japanese translation bulletin board, I often
browsed the site with interest. When Japanese and Korean Netizens meet, historical controversy
naturally occurs. To be fair, I have encountered not a sight where the Japanese side was a loser inany controversy. When the Japanese side pasted URLs of data, photographs and official documents
based on primary historical sources and showed these to them, the Korean side instantly fell silent.
We thought that the Korean side was fully persuaded by the Japanese presentation of facts and thatthe thread was abandoned. But on the next day, a new thread with an almost identical title was up,
and controversy started again as if nothing had ever happened. Thus, the presentation of data by theJapanese side ended up being totally useless.

To put it simply, while the situation looks like abandonment of discussion or flight on the part of
Korea, I don’t think they had such notion at all. I presume that historical data posted in the bulletin
were so shocking that they preferred to think that the data did not exist. That is, they deleted themfrom memory. Like a child who happens to witness his parents in an act supposedly forbidden act.

40Nobody wants to see nor imagine what his parents are doing. However, it is an undeniable fact thatthe act made him what he is today. This can be easily understood with mature thinking,First, there is a cause to everything and then a result follows. Verbally, this reason sounds quite
natural. It was Buddha that first discovered this reason. I cannot help but wonder why left-wingscholars and critics who advocate a materialistic view of history forget the reason and try to explain
history exclusively in terms of feeling, sentiment and emotion when it comes to dealing with therelationship between Japan and Korea. However, it is also true that without perceiving the emotionalpart, it is impossible to understand the abnormal relationship between Japan and Korea. And I should
say that this book is thoroughly focused on the emotional aspects of the Korean-Japaneserelationship.
How, now, should a child who witnessed his parents’ act cope with this as a little boy? Most children
try to forget about it by shutting out the “witnessed sight”from their consciousness. Some may
rationalize it and deal with it in their own ways. For example, a boy may have interpreted it as “Dadand Mom are having a fight,” or “Dad is hurting Mom.” This boy may grow hatred toward his father
without realizing it. Or when he grows up, he may have an extreme abhorrence of sexual intercourse
itself. In my opinion, the theory that Japan’s Annexation was the act of rape is an exact example ofthis failed rationalization.

My true intention of comparing the Koreans to naïve boys lies here. One can say that they are
pure-hearted. They are afraid of being hurt emotionally. Therefore, they become punitive toward
others.

The Koreans sometimes act in haughty and insolent ways toward Southeast Asians, simply because
they are the peoples of developing countries. However, here is a solid fact in which the Koreans cannever dispute. It is the fact that Southeast Asian peoples fought against their former State master andfinally won their independence, shedding their own blood. So long as their brave feats are marked inhistory, I don’t totally deny wars.
Now, back to Korea. Korea’s independence from Qing China was brought only after Japan defeated
Qing in the Sino-Japanese War, and their independence from Japan was realized as a result ofJapan’s defeat in World War II. In other words, the Koreans have never once experienced winningtheir independence on their own. Korea has not gone through a due process of development as anation and therefore, Korea is a virgin, so to speak. In many occasions, Korea tends to act in a
disproportionately haughty manner against neighboring countries. This is almost like a virgin,41

surrounded by grownups, pretending to look like a dandy playboy as much as possible.

However, boys have potential. For them, true nation-building or a chance to become a true man liesin the great enterprise of the unification of North and South Koreas. This one, we truly want them toachieve all by themselves, without our lending a hand.

And when they become decent men, an equal relationship between Japan and Korea will arrive inthe true sense of the word.

May such a blessing arrive someday!

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