ED Abe should change
Fortunately, Japan still has voices of conscience
A group of Japanese scholars and activists held a rally in Tokyo, Saturday, urging Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration to stop “Korea-bashing” and withdraw export restrictions they believe stemmed from anti-Korean sentiments.
One of the organizers, Haruki Wada, a historian and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, said Abe should drop his recognition of Korea as the “enemy,” and be more sincere in dealing with past wrongdoings Japan committed against Koreans.
On the same day, a group of Japanese citizens protested in front of TBS in Tokyo over its recent broadcasting of a show, in which a panelist called on Japanese men to assault Korean women, referring to a video showing a man beating a Japanese woman in public near Hongik University in western Seoul recently. The video, shot by a friend of the victim, went viral online and prompted Korean police to investigate. Generally, Koreans showed sympathy toward the victim and called for the man to be punished sternly.
But on the Japanese program, a male professor described Korea as a country where violence against female tourists was normal, citing the video. “If Korean women visit Japan, Japanese men should do the same to them,” he said.
During the rally, the participants urged the broadcaster to stop producing programs inciting hatred toward Koreans using such unfortunate incidents. They said hate speech against Koreans had become normal under Abe.
It is fortunate that a civic movement is gaining momentum in Japan to share concerns about the ever-deteriorating relations with South Korea and urging Abe to show sincere efforts to restore relations with Seoul based on a correct understanding of history.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, a vocal critic of Abe, visited the office of The Korea Times last week to share his concerns about Abe's biased diplomacy toward South Korea.
Hatoyama, Japan's prime minister from 2009 to 2010, said the bone of contention between the countries was Abe's ignorance of the Japanese government's previous stance that individual compensation claims to damages for forced labor during World War II were not fully addressed by a diplomatic treaty Seoul and Tokyo signed in 1965 to normalize ties.
However, the Abe administration has reversed its stance, launching economic retaliation seemingly in response to the South Korean Supreme Court's ruling last year that ordered Japanese firms to compensate surviving South Korean victims of forced labor, Hatoyama said.
He did not agree with claims by some Japanese that Japan has already apologized enough for its wrongdoings against Koreans.
“What is important is how victims feel,” Hatoyama said. “Japanese would not say they apologized enough if they know what they did to Koreans.”
During a visit to Seoul in 2015, Hatoyama knelt in front of the site of Seodaemun Prison, where Korean independence fighters were jailed, tortured and martyred during the colonial era, to offer a sincere apology for Koreans' suffering. This still remains a sensational image to Koreans.