Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea

Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea is complex and multi-faceted. Anti-Japanese attitudes in the Korean Peninsula can be traced back to the effects of Japanese pirate raids and the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592-1598), such as dismembering more than 20,000 noses and ears from Koreans and bringing them back to Japan to create nose tombs, but are largely a product of the period of Japanese rule in Korea from 1910-1945 and subsequent education. This sentiment may also be at least to some extent influenced by issues related to Koreans in Japan.

Effect of Japanese rule in Korea

See also: Korea under Japanese rule

Korea was ruled by the Japanese Empire from 1910 to 1945. Japan's involvement began with the 1876 Treaty of Ganghwa during the Joseon Dynasty of Korea and increased over the following decades with the Gapsin Coup (1882), the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) , the assassination of Empress Myeongseong at the hands of Japanese agents in 1895, the establishment of the Korean Empire (1897), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the Taft-Katsura Agreement (1905), and culminating with the 1905 Eulsa Treaty, removing Korean autonomous diplomatic rights, and the 1910 Annexation Treaty, both of which were eventually declared null and void by the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1965.

Cultural assimilation

Arirang is a Korean language movie that the Korean film director Na Woon-gyu produced in 1926

The Japanese colonization of Korea has been mentioned as the case in point of "cultural genocide" by Yuji Ishida in February 23, 2004. The colonial government put into practice the suppression of Korean culture and language in an "attempt to root out all elements of Korean culture from society"."Focus was heavily and intentionally placed upon the psychological and cultural element in Japan's colonial policy, and the unification strategies adopted in the fields of culture and education were designed to eradicate the individual ethnicity of the Korean race."

After the annexation of Korea, Japan enforced a cultural assimilation policy. The Korean language was removed from the required school subjects in Korea in 1936. Japan imposed the family name system along with civil law (Sōshi-kaimei) and Shinto religion. Koreans were forbidden to write or speak the Korean language in schools, businesses, or public places under penalty of death. However, many Korean language movies were screened in the Korean peninsula.

In addition, Koreans were angry over Japanese alteration and destruction of various Korean monuments including Gyeongbok Palace (경복궁, Gyeongbokgung) and the revision of documents that portrayed the Japanese in a negative light.

Independence Movement

On March 1, 1919, anti-Japanese rule protests were held all across the country to demand independence. About 2 million Koreans actively participated in what is now known as the March 1st Movement. A Declaration of Independence [1], patterned after the American version, was read by teachers and civic leaders in tens of thousands of villages throughout Korea: “Today marks the declaration of Korean independence. There will be peaceful demonstrations all over Korea. If our meetings are orderly and peaceful, we shall receive the help of President Wilson and the great powers at Versailles, and Korea will be a free nation.” Japan repressed independence movement by military power. In one well attested incident, villagers were herded into the local church which was then set on fire. The official Japanese count of casualties include 553 killed, 1,409 injured, and 12,522 arrested, but the Korean estimates are much higher: over 7,500 killed, about 15,000 injured, and 45,000 arrested.

Comfort Women

While estimates vary, Korea states that many Korean women were kidnapped and coerced by the Japanese authorities into military prostitution, euphemistically called "comfort women" (위안부, wianbu). [2] Some Japanese historians, such as Yoshiaki Yoshimi, using the diaries and testimonies of military officials as well as official documents from Japan and archives of the Tokyo tribunal, have argued that the Imperial Japanese military was either directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving, luring, and sometimes kidnapping young women throughout Japan’s Asian colonies and occupied territories. However Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata stated that there was no organized forced recruitment of comfort women by Japanese government or military. [3]

Contemporary issues

A 2000 CNN ASIANOW article described popularity of Japanese culture among younger South Koreans as "unsettling" for older South Koreans who remember the occupation by the Japanese.

In South Korea, collaborators to the Japanese colonial government, called chinilpa (친일파), are generally recognized as national traitors. The South Korean National Assembly passed the Special law to redeem pro-Japanese collaborators' property on December 8, 2005 and the law was enacted on December 29, 2005. In 2006, The National Assembly of South Korea formed a Committee for the Inspection of Property of Japan Collaborators. The aim was to reclaim property inappropriately gained by cooperation with the Japanese government during colonialization. The project was expected to satisfy Koreans' demands that property acquired by collaborators under the Japanese colonial authorities be returned.

Japanese textbook revisionism

Main article: Japanese history textbook controversies

Anti-Japanese sentiment is also due to the Japanese government's textbook revisionism. On June 26, 1982 the textbook screening process in Japan came under scrutiny when the media of Japan and its neighboring countries gave extensive coverage to changes required by the Minister of Education. Experts from the ministry sought to soften textbook references to Japanese aggression before and during World War II. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937, for example, was modified to "advance." Passages describing the fall of Nanking justified the Japanese atrocities by describing the acts as a result of Chinese provocations. Pressure from China successfully led the Ministry of Education to adopt a new authorization criterion - the "Neighboring Country Clause" (近隣諸国条項) - stating: "textbooks ought to show understanding and seek international harmony in their treatment of modern and contemporary historical events involving neighboring Asian countries."

In 2006, Japanese textbooks wrote that the Liancourt Rocks is Japanese territory. The head of the South Korean Ministry of Education, Kim Shinil, sent a letter of protest to Bunmei Ibuki, the Minister of Education, on May 09, 2007. In a speech marking the 88th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun called for Japan to correct their school textbooks on controversial topics ranging from "inhumane rape of comfort women" to "the Korean ownership of the Liancourt Rocks".

National relations

Yasuhiro Nakasone discontinued visits to Yasukuni Shrine due to the People's Republic of China's requests in 1986. However, Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi resumed visits to Yasukuni Shrine on August 13, 2001. He visited the shrine six times as Prime Minister, stating that he was "paying homage to the servicemen who died for defense of Japan." These visits drew strong condemnation and protests from Japan's neighbors, mainly China. As a result, China and South Korea refused to meet with Koizumi, and there were no mutual visits between Chinese and Japanese leaders after October 2001 and between South Korean and Japanese leaders after June 2005. Former President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun suspended all summit talks between South Korea and Japan.　

Education

A large number of anti-Japanese images made by school children from Gyeyang Middle School, many of which depicting acts of violence against Japan, were displayed in Gyulhyeon Station as part of a school art project.

According to a survey conducted by Korean Immigrant Workers Human Rights Center in 2006, 34.1% of the primary school students in Incheon region answered that "Japanese should be expelled from Korea" and the rate was considerably higher compared to Chinese (8.7%), black Africans (8.7%), East Asians (5.0%), black Americans (4.3%), and white Americans (2.3%).

Professor Park Cheol-Hee of Gyeongin National University of Education pointed out that there were many descriptions regarding other nations as inferior to emphasize the superiority of Korean culture, and Japan is consistently described as culturally inferior. A survey found that 60% middle school students and 51% of high school students in South Korea view the descriptions about Japan and China in the current Korean history textbooks as biased.

Appearance in South Korean popular culture

• The General's Son (장군의 아들; Janggun eui Adeul) - 1990 movie set in Korea under Japanese rule, in which Kim Du-han (then a gangster) attacks Japanese yakuza. Two sequels were released in 1991 and 1992.
• The Mugunghwa Has Bloomed (무궁화 꽃이 피었습니다; Mugunghwa ggoti pieotseubnida) - A popular novelist Gim Jinmyeong (김진명) wrote this novel in 1993. (Mugunghwa, known as Hibiscus syriacus, is the national flower of South Korea.) In this novel, North and South Korea together develop a nuclear weapon, which is dropped off the coast of Japan as a symbolic warning. This novel was criticized for a blatantly inaccurate depiction of Korean-American particle physicist Benjamin W. Lee (Lee Whiso 이휘소) as a nationalistic nuclear physicist; in this novel, Lee cuts his own leg flesh in order to hide the blueprint of a nuclear weapon, which is secretly transferred to the South Korean government. Lee's family sued Kim for defamation. The novel became a major bestseller, and was made into a film in 1995. ([4])
• Phantom: The Submarine - A movie in which a secret South Korean nuclear submarine falls under the mercy of a charismatic half-mad captain, who attempts to carpet Japanese cities with nuclear weapons. This movie won six "Academy Awards" in South Korea in 1999. ([5])
• There Is No Japan (일본은 없다; Ilboneun Eopta) - Travelogue written by Grand National Party spokeswoman Jeon Yeook (전여옥) in 1994, based upon her experiences in Japan as a KBS correspondent. She compares South Korea with Japan, praises South Korean excellence, and describes the Japanese as an incapable people.
• Hyeomillyu (혐일류; The Hate Japan Wave) - Korean cartoonist Yang Byeong-seol's (양병설) response to the book Manga Kenkanryu (The Hating Korea Wave).
• Hanbando - The South Korea government exposes the misinterpretation of the history of Japanese Government, and Japanese Government does the apology and compensation to a South Korea.

See also

• Anti-Japanese propaganda
• Korea under Japanese rule
• Sea of Japan naming dispute
• Liancourt Rocks dispute
• Japanese history textbook controversies
• Voluntary Agency Network of Korea
• Hetalia Axis Powers
• Japan–Korea disputes