How history is being used by Korea

See also
the issue of the Sea of Japan
the issue of the division of Korean peninsula
Korean hisotry shaped by ignoring the important documents/Mimana=Kaya
Korean history shaped by imagination
Evil Japan discovered again
leftist view of the Korean war
learning to hate
This is how we defend the great Korean history
nogun ri massacre
Korean history for nationalism
one-in-five-korean-kid-believe,,
We are forced again
I have shown that holocaust in China is sometimes being used to get what China wants.link
link
Korea is using the same tactics to get what she wants.
Korea was a colonized nation. I admit that in this sense she was a victim. but she is using this victimness to get what is irrelavat to it.

Let me illustrate.

Kimchi is more than a food for the Koreans. It is a kind of national symbol and part of the national identity for Korea. Kimchi is Korean traditional culture itself. Korea has a saying that "the taste of kimchi is the taste of your mother's fingertips" (The Independent: October 9, 2000). Thus, to use the term "kimchi" for imitation kimchi is not acceptable for the Koreans, and even it might insult Korean culture.

Finally, we cannot forget the sad history between Korea and Japan, Japan's colonization of Korea during World War. Some Koreans do not have good feelings toward Japan and regard the kimchi dispute as another invasion by Japan. There are complex sentiments between Japan and Korea because of their history, and the kimchi issue raised new conflict between the two countries.
(TED) Projects

Kimichi has nothing to do with our past.

''The (South Korean) government urges the Japanese government to immediately retract its unreasonable and intolerable claim over Dokdo, which is an integral part of our territory,'' the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The statement was released to protest the results of the Japanese education ministry's annual textbook screening, released Wednesday. The ministry asked for revisions to references made to the islets to clarify that they are Japanese territory.
South Korea ''reaffirms it would sternly deal with the Dokdo issue in the context of protecting its own territory,'' the Foreign Ministry statement says.
The statement also denounces the Japanese government for trying to glorify past aggression into neighboring countries and drumming into Japanese youth Japan's territorial claim over the islets that Japan had once forcibly taken over from Korea.
It says Japan's claim over the islets is ''clear manifestation'' of its ''whitewashing, distorting and glorifying'' of past history, along with visits to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined together with war dead.
South Korea and Japan have seen their relations sink to their lowest point after a Japanese local assembly designated 'Takeshima Day'' last year.SEOUL, March 30 KYODO

Takeshima has nothing to do with the colonization.
Japan claims that Japanese fishermen discoverd the island as late as 1616link and used it as a base for fishing.
Korea have a different story.(I think Japan's claim is right, but that does not matter here)
Japan and korea has had a dispute over the territory over there since around that time.

The colonization started in 1910 and ended in 1945.
Takeshima issue has nothing do with the colonization, nor glorification of history.
Japan suggested Korean to send the issue to ICJ.Korea rejected probably because she know she would lose.Instead, she is using emotioanl, illogical, hysterical tactics.
I am sick and tired of this kind of ureasonable claim by Korea.
(By the way, my elder brother told me that when I was three years old, I took his toy box, and shouted and cried, jumped and thumped my chest"this is mine!" "this is mine!".Not knowing what to do my brother asked me to ask my mother. I asked her, and she told me it is his. My brother said I understood quite easily that that was his toybox. You know what I am getting at.)


I think Korea's abuse of history is clear when we compare her attitude toward Japan and the U,S, North Korea, and South Korea herself.
The U.S.hisotorty textbook does not mention No gun massacre, yet South Korean government has never picked up this topic to the U.S.
The North Korea government is glorifiying and whitewashing its history and its present situation,and yet South Korea does not complain about it but hold the sunshine policy.
South Korea's history textbook does not mention her own massacre at Vietnam, at Korean War, but when it comes to Japan, its people go crazy. [1]

Ironically,a Korean professor is beginning to realize its hipocracy.

서울대 이영훈 교수는 "노무현 대통령이 이미 대중의 정서로 자리 잡은 맹목적인 반일주의을 정치적 수단으로 동원하고 있다"고 주장했다.
ソウル大イ・ヨンフン教授は "ノ・ムヒョン大統領がもう大衆の情で落ち着いた盲目的なバンイルズウィウル政治的手段に動員している"と主張した

이와 관련, 이 교수는 "구한말에 대한 역사왜곡도 심각하고, 일본 제국주의 시대의 왜곡도 엄중하다"면서
これと関連,この教授は "旧韓国末に対する歴史歪曲も深刻で,日本帝国主義時代の歪曲も厳重だ"と 韓国日報 2006/03/29.

A professor at Soul University said the president Roh was using aniti-Japanese sentiment of the mass to get the benifit. In related to this.The historical distortion of the late Chosun period is serious and that of the Japanese rule is grave as well

アジアの真実

OK, so the Nogeun-ri film is complete

I don’t want to use one independent filmmaker’s take on history to be indicative of attitudes as a whole, but after the success of “Welcome to Dongmakgol,” one has to ask whether Koreans and Americans view their shared history in remotely the same way. This is particularly the case with younger Koreans whose collective memory of the Korean War and the role the United States played in it is being shaped by films like this and “Dongmakgol.”

It is good that Americans begins to realize that younger Korean's view on history is haped by fiction.



It seems that there is a sign that even China has just begun to change its policy.

「歴史を基礎にするな」中国政府系元所長が対日転換論

　【北京＝藤野彰】中国が歴史問題で対日圧力を強める中、政府系研究機関・中国社会科学院の元日本研究所長で国際問題専門家の何方氏が、「歴史問題を日中関係の基礎にしてはならない」との見解を、中国の専門誌「社会科学論壇」（３月上期号）に発表した。


　何氏は歴史偏重の対日政策を批判し、事実上、歴史カードの放棄を主張。中国で「対日新思考」が封殺されて以降、対日政策の大胆な転換を訴える意見が公開されるのは極めて異例で、論議を呼びそうだ。

　何氏は外務省弁公庁副主任、国務院国際問題研究センター副総幹事も務めた元政府幹部。同誌に掲載した自らのインタビュー記事の中で持論を表明した。

　何氏は「歴史問題を国家関係の基礎とするのは非現実的で不適当。歴史に決着をつけようとすれば、どんな国家と隣国の関係も大国同士の関係もうまくいかない」と指摘した。

　さらに、「日中関係の基礎を歴史問題での共通認識に置いても、実現は難しいだろう。歴史の決着を最優先すれば、両国関係は絶え間ない悪循環に陥る。それはわが国の戦略的利益にかなうのか」と疑問を呈し、歴史カードを切り続けることは中国の国益を損なうとの見方を示した。
（2006年3月28日3時8分 読売新聞

It says a Chinese specialist insisted that it didn't pay to base international issues on history issue.


I hope Korea government will learn the same lesson.

Notes
[1]

Today Vietnam is indeed friendly with Korea - but a different Korea. It's all the more staggering as South Korea was one of the few countries that sent troops - over 340,000 between 1966 and 1972, including future coup-maker and president Roh Tae-woo - to fight on Saigon's side. America paid them well, in dollars that fueled South Korea's industrial take-off. And fight they did, with a grim reputation for brutality (skinning victims alive a speciality, allegedly.) In bars in Seoul, hard-faced men still rant that, left to them, Vietnam would not have been lost. Last year when the Hankyore Shinmun, a radical Seoul daily, ran an expose of ROK forces' atrocities in Vietnam, irate veterans' groups trashed the paper's offices. There's a wider blind spot here. Koreans, North and South, endlessly rehearse their own grievances as victims: witness the current row over a revisionist Japanese school history textbook, which glosses over pre-1945 atrocities. Yet many an old POW recalls that the cruelest guards in Japanese camps were Korean.

Vietnamese, by contrast, seem readier to forgive and forget - or at any rate to move on. South Korean business is welcomed, despite regular cases of violence by male Korean managers against female Vietnamese workers. (Lest I seem to harp on this theme, my defense is twofold: it's true, and Korean hypocrisy gets my goat.) But the odd slap hasn't stopped Hanoi from forging far warmer political ties over the past decade with Seoul than Pyongyang. This has its ironies. The first South Korean prime minister to visit Hanoi, a former refugee from North Korea, looked less than enthused by the statutory trip to pay respects at Ho Chi Minh's shrine. Still, business is business. By contrast, the unspoken question from his hosts to Kim Yong-nam will have been: So, comrade, but what have you got to offerJuly 18, 2001 By Aidan Foster-Carter Asian times

update

Stop Teaching Prejudice

What I do not look forward to is dealing with a new crop of students brainwashed by their middle school teachers to harbor an unreasonable, and unjustifiable, hatred toward America and Americans. I blame the Korean history teacher for this. They seem to promote prejudice, and students being students, soak up what is said, never questioning their teachers. How unfortunate

Korea times03-22-2006Kathryn R. McNeil
Naju, South Cholla Province






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