Regarding a debate going on about a government report on war crimes (printed by the Truth and Reconciliation commission), on which I was one of the editors and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the government's attempt to place libelous blame on us for their politically-motivated attempt to squash the report:
The main problem with Korea is its nationalistic history and being too timid to look history in the face. Korea always gets on Japan's case, but Korea is actually exactly the same in its approach to history -- history for the sake of fostering national pride and "national consciousness."
Which leads to the Korean inability to admit some of its own people were Class C war criminals who helped torture capture British soldiers simply because they were Korean, or who cannot tolerate the suggestion that the Japanese occupation had anything to do with a jumpstart to the Korean industrial economy, or even dealing squarely with the "comfort women," who are used even now mostly as a blunt historical tool with which to shame Japan, but is never turned against the repressive, misogynist Korean bodies and orgs that were both materially and morally complicit in the project.
Korea just happens to be on the right side of the sensitive history regarding the Japanese invasion and exploitation of the peninsula. But in terms of overall stance and approach to history, Korea has been no more able to come to terms with its bloody history than Japan has.
Because, as the report points out, once you look too close, nearly everybody has some blood on their hands.
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