電子版エコノミストの記事についた朝鮮人のコメント。慰安婦に関する部分以外でも、やっぱりなと思わせる部分が多い。彼は日本の朝鮮統治がいかに残虐だったか西洋人は充分理解していないと不満を訴えている。
「愛すべき明成皇后」を殺し、文化ジェノサイドを行った。朝鮮語を奪い、日本の植民地支配を正当化するために書物を遺棄するか加工した。特に酷かったのは、日本兵が住民に対して容赦なかったこと。処刑、レイプ、強制労働。秘密の軍用人体実験。第二次大戦中には、たくさんの朝鮮人の女性が（多くは十代だった）慰安婦と呼ばれ軍用売春施設に強制された。彼女たちは、非人道的に性奴隷として扱われ、肉体的な虐待を受けた。ほんの一部がこの世の地獄から生還した。・・・このような目に遭わせられた朝鮮人が日本人を快く思わないのは当然だ、と彼は訴えている。
欧米人が彼のコメントから何を学ぶかはともかく、日本人は彼の訴えから何を読みとれるのか？たぶん韓国では、子供たちがこのように教育されているのだろう。「真の韓日友好」の為には、こういった誤解を解いていくことが必須となる。エコノミストの記事自体にも紹介する価値があると思うが、それは機会があればということで。
今見たらコメント数が141に増えていた（記事は8月のもの。御蔵入りさせたまま忘れていた）。もう一度じっくり目を通してみたい。
vjRD3GWwSW wrote:
Aug 30th 2010 5:42 GMT
I find it simply farcical when Westerners who know very little about the true origins of the long-held Korean hostility against Japan dismiss it as a light, once-upon-a-time happening. As a person born and raised in Korea, I deeply sympathize with the elderly who actually went through the Japanese occupation years as well as virtually almost all of the citizens who recognize the unforgettable scars that my country still bears in evidence of the past sufferings. This article, not to mention almost every other writing by foreigners (largely from the West) on the Korea-Japan relationship, seems to portray Korean people as some ignorant, grudge-holding lot who don't let bygones be bygones. The fact of the matter is that the Japanese government has long been reluctant to accept, let alone apologize for, the atrocities they committed against innocent Korean civilians not only during the 35 years of the Japanese occupation but also during the Second World War.
Starting with the assassination of the well-known, beloved Empress Myeongseong, the Japanese carried out cultural genocide against significant Korean customs, values, and so on, the most important of which was the valued Korean language. Numerous Korean texts that held enormous cultural value were trashed or altered to justify the Japanese colonization. People were forced to change their original names to Japanese ones and the use of Korean was harsly suppressed in schools all over the country. Now, here's what's even more horrific: Japanese soldiers were especially cruel to common villagers who were defenseless against the former's brutal treatment, which ranged from arbitrary execution, rape, forced labor, and clandestine military medical experimentation. During World War II, many Korean women, the majority of whom were teenaged girls, were forced into Japanese military brothels and were labeled "comfort women"; they were subjected to inhuman sexual slavery and physical abuse. The handful of survivors from this living hell, now very old and fragile, still suffer from serious illnesses, the remnants of those past years.
Now, let me come down to the bone of the problem. What infuriates the Korean people is the fact that the Japanese government has largely denied these charges, whether that be the atrocities committed during the occupation or WWII (the existence of Japanese military brothels, for example, is an established fact that some Japanese just won't admit), refused to pay reparations for the comfort women, and even meddled with their school textbooks. The Japanese government has covered up many incidents that would put in in a disagreeable position across the globe. Data falsification is rampant as well. The fact that some ex-millitary generals of Japan who were the very people who committed the war crimes still sit at the high society of Japan and lead convenient lives when many former comfort women suffer from fractured hip, missing teeth, bowed legs, and pretty much every other horrible sickness you can imagine is outrageous.
Unless the Japanese government unequivocally apologizes for all of its crimes and stops trying to bury the past, we Koreans' negative view of a world superpower won't change a bit.
Unless you see the sickening images of Korean civilians (many of them nationalists fighting against the cultural genocide and the oppressive Japanese rule) murdered in the most heartless ways and their honorable deaths mocked and dirtied (there's a picture of Japanese soldiers greening with the skulls of dead Koreans spiked on long sticks); unless you hear the heartbreaking cries of a former comfort woman humiliated by a Japanese attempt to cover up her protest for Japan to apologize for her past sufferings; and unless you really understand the whole generation of Koreans holding out their national flags on the Independence Day, you won't know why Koreans still hold on to the past. It's something you probably won't ever understand unless you're a person born on the Korean soil and raised to love the country as it is.
I won't lie and say ALL Japanese people are in denial of their war criems. There are also intelligent Japanese people who recognize their government's faults and even protest against the notorious cover-up attempts. I'm not supporting any racial/ethnic stereotype or generalization on the whole country of Japan.
But, again, what Koreans want is the formal, unequivocal apologies of the Japanese government. And an official war-crimes tribunal that would actually punish the former perpetrators, some of whom still enjoy comfortable lives.
A 100-year war of words The Economist Aug 30th 2010
"It's something you probably won't ever understand unless you're a person born on the Korean soil and raised to love the country as it is" 「韓国の大地に生まれ、ありのままの韓国を愛すべく育てられた人でなければ、決して理解できないだろう」と彼は言う。
彼は日本の朝鮮統治は戦争犯罪で、 依然処罰されることなく生きている当時の関係者を法廷が裁かれることを望んでいる。
