“Korean Peninsula Looked Like Kim Jung-il’s Regime in the Early 20th Century”

Nisio Ganji, ex-head of “An Organization of Making New Japanese History Textbooks,” who led a wave of distorted Japanese history textbooks in 2001, took sides with a provincial governor, Isihara Sintaro, who is infamous for his absurd remark on the “Justification of the Japanese Annexation of Korea.”

“Until the beginning of the 21st century, there were no impartial laws and rational distribution of wealth on the Korean peninsula, with its inferior system and extreme poverty, which is just like Kim Jung-il’s current regime in North Korea,” said Nisio on his contribution article in the Mainichi press on November 1.

He insisted, “Korean people thought that being treated equally as the world’s best people as Japanese was better than living under the Japanese protection. As a result, an organization with more than 1,000,000 Japanese-friendly people, organized by Japan on purpose, unfolded political movements asking for the annexation.”

He also quibbled, “Korean people so welcomed the annexation that the competition rate for joining the Japanese army was 7.3 to 1 in 1938, and during the heat of the war in 1943, about 300,000 people signed up for the army, resulting in the competition rate of 47.6 to 1.”

Currently, due to the expansion of the right wing party in Japan, there have been consecutive historical absurd remarks from powerful politicians such as “changing the family name was what Koreans wanted” and “the Japanese annexation of Korea was admitted by the United Nations in accordance with the agreement of both Korea and Japan.”

parkwj@donga.com