{"id":2199154,"date":"2022-10-14T11:33:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T11:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nknews.org\/koreapro\/?p=2199154"},"modified":"2023-04-05T16:11:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:11:09","slug":"how-anti-japanism-stunts-south-koreas-ambitions-to-be-democratic-pivot-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koreapro.org\/2022\/10\/how-anti-japanism-stunts-south-koreas-ambitions-to-be-democratic-pivot-state\/","title":{"rendered":"How anti-Japanism stunts South Korea\u2019s ambition to enhance US alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"
As inter-Korean tensions rose this week, another familiar trope of South Korean politics reared its head: paranoia and angst about a former colonizer.<\/span><\/p>\n Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, described joint U.S.-ROK-Japan naval exercises as an \u201cextreme pro-Japanese act\u201d \u2014 a major insult in Korean political vocabulary. The DP leader then approached what many outside Korea see as tinfoil hat territory when he suggested the Japanese military will return to the Korean Peninsula under the banner of imperialism.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Then on Oct. 12, DP lawmaker Kim Byung-ju, a retired four-star general, claimed that \u201cJapan is a future threat\u201d and suggested absolute vigilance when conducting military operations together.<\/p>\n Their claims may appear strange: After all, the drills were in response to a mutual threat \u2014 North Korea \u2014 and South Korea and Japan are liberal democracies, allies of the U.S. with robust economies and pluralistic societies.<\/span><\/p>\n But millions of Koreans believe Lee Jae-myung\u2019s remarks quite literally, and Japan-bashing is a tried-and-true way to gain popular support for progressive politicians and rally the base.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Many South Koreans <\/span>see modern Japan<\/span><\/a> as the same, unchanged imperial power that controlled and brutalized the Korean Peninsula one hundred years ago. According to this view, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the principal boogeyman for anti-Japanism in South Korea, a militarist whose <\/span>major ambition<\/span><\/a> was to lay <\/span>the groundwork<\/span><\/a> for re-invading the Korean Peninsula.<\/span><\/p>\n In late September, for example, South Korean state broadcaster KBS aired a 48-minute documentary about the impact of Sino-U.S. conflict on world affairs but devoted a seven minutes to raising the alarm about Japanese militarism. Over half the Japan-related footage in the <\/span>documentary<\/span><\/a> focused on Japanese weapons and military training, complete with dramatic, threatening music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then the show trotted out a usual line from Korean nationalists that they claim proves their conspiratorial claims to be true: Japan has never apologized for its colonial-era abuses and, since it doesn\u2019t repent, must want to try again. In truth, Tokyo has issued <\/span>dozens of apologies<\/span><\/a> over the past 70 years, though none have apparently fit the criteria to overcome anti-Japan prejudices in South Korea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n