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What are your expectations for President Yun Seok-yue? Twisted National Assembly is a thorny road - Should Japan approve or wait and see? - South Korea's general election will be held in 2024.
Positive theory of Japan-Korea relations and wait-and-see theory
Remains twisted until 2024
Will true speech be freed under the new administration
Korean society will be denounced if it affirms Japanese rule
A country where there is no freedom of speech about history
Looking at Japanese public opinion regarding the prospects for Japan-Korea relations since the inauguration of the Yun Seok-Yeol administration, there are some positive views toward improving relations and a wait-and-see view seen mainly on the right. As always, the affirmative opinion has no concrete content, and since the other party is asking for an improvement in the relationship, things will probably get better. It's just a matter of trying to get along because we're neighboring countries.
The wait-and-see theory is based on the points of the Korean unified local elections in June and the national election in 2024, and that the Democratic Party (a pro-China, anti-Japanese party) holds the majority of the Korean National Assembly.Twisted stateTherefore, unless the ruling party wins the power of the people in the 2024 general election, no bill will be passed, so nothing can be done. Until then, Japan should do nothing and wait and see.
The least I can say is that I don't expect Japan-Korea relations to deteriorate any further during the next five years of the next administration. Personally, I think that if things don't get any worse, there's no need for them to get any better. In other words, there is a necessary distance between Japan and South Korea. This may be the best distance relationship.
In the long run, it would be most effective if the speech of pro-Japanese groups was liberated, rather than if the anti-Japanese movement subsided on the surface. In addition to those who prefer Japanese culture in South Korea, pro-Japanese speech is another form of speech that has been suppressed regarding the annexation of Japan and South Korea and Japan's support for South Korea after the war. Japan has no choice but to wait for South Korea to change, but there is no sign of that happening at all. The appearance of calm on the surface is only a temporary phenomenon. The root of Japan-Korea relations lies within South Korea, where freedom of speech is not recognized regarding the past history of Japan and South Korea. It is impossible to publicly state the fact that the Korean Peninsula modernized under Japanese rule.
Under Japanese rule, slaves, who accounted for half of the population, were liberated, the class system was abolished, a school education system was established, food self-sufficiency increased, starvation deaths decreased sharply, sanitary conditions improved, and cholera and typhoid fever were reduced. The number of deaths due to such things has decreased dramatically. These are facts that do not exist in Korea.
In South Korea's historical perspective, those who affirmed Japanese rule were expelled from academia in order to make the history of being enslaved and violated by Japan into a fact. He was also expelled from politics and government, and media outlets were also blocked. This is an unobjective view of history that only accepts one opinion, and is not academic in the first place. At the root of Japan-Korea relations is this unilaterally created view of history and the education of history based on that view. Unless this changes, we can see that even if the government continues to work together as it has done in the past, it will crumble like a sandcastle. This is exactly what history has proven.
In other words, improving Japan-Korea relations means that South Korea itself will gain academic and speech freedom, that scholars who support Japanese rule will return to academia, that they will return to politics, and that South Korea will become a democratic country where people can have free discussions. . Without this, anti-Japanese education will never disappear. This is an issue that requires the process of South Korea maturing as a democratic country, so it will take a very long time. Therefore, Japan should continue to keep its distance and not approach them easily.
If we look at the past, we are skeptical that politics will improve Japan-Korea relations. This problem is that academic and freedom of speech have not been secured in South Korea in the history of Japan and South Korea.
Syngman Rhee, who was not on the Korean Peninsula during the Japanese colonial period: The founding of an anti-Japanese nation and the resurrection of Kim Gu’s ghost
He is not often introduced in Japan, but do you know the man in the photo? His name is Kim Gu, and he was a member of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. After Japan lost the war, he fought with Syngman Rhee, who would later become president, over who should become president of South Korea. I would like to highlight that the former president Moon Jae-in and the current leader of the largest opposition party, Lee Jae-myung, are closely related to Kim Gu's ideas.
The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was established in Shanghai in 1919, triggered by the March 1st Independence Movement that took place on the Korean Peninsula. It planned and orchestrated anti-Japanese riots on the Korean Peninsula from afar, but it was a mock government with no real governmental functions. Syngman Rhee was involved in the establishment of the Provisional Government, but the year after it was established, he lost in a factional struggle and was ousted, and moved to Hawaii. In the first place, Syngman Rhee participated in the distribution of documents calling for the abdication of Emperor Gojong of the Korean Empire, was imprisoned, and after being released by amnesty in 1904, he defected to the United States and settled in Hawaii. In 1919, he participated in the establishment of the Provisional Government in Shanghai, but returned to Hawaii the following year, so in fact, Syngman Rhee experienced almost no Japanese rule at all and viewed Japan from an American perspective. Syngman Rhee returned to the Korean Peninsula in 1945 after the end of the war.
Now, Kim Gu requested to return to Korea as the "Chairman of the Provisional Government," but the legitimacy of the Provisional Government was not recognized by the US government, so he chose to return to the southern part of the Korean Peninsula as an ordinary citizen. He then merged with the Central Council for Promoting Independence led by Syngman Rhee to form the National Association for Promoting Korean Independence and became its vice president. In other words, at this point, the Provisional Government that began with the March 1st Independence Movement in 1919 was not recognized as legitimate, and Syngman Rhee, who was supported by the United States, was on the path to founding the Republic of Korea.
Kim Gu was a staunch anti-Japanese, and in 1896, he became angry when a restaurant owner served Japanese merchant Tsuchida Josuke first, saying that priority should be given to the order of orders, not the order in which they were made. He then assaulted Tsuchida, beat him to death with stones and iron clubs, stole his money and valuables, and dumped his body in a frozen river without burying it. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death. He was later pardoned and his sentence reduced, but he managed to escape prison, participated in the March 1st Independence Movement, and set up something like a government in exile in Shanghai. An Jung-geun's son An Jun-seong, who assassinated Ito Hirobumi, visited Ito Bunkichi, the son of Ito Hirobumi, and apologized. An was angry and asked Chiang Kai-shek of China to kill An Jun-seong.
■English subtitles
As the division of North and South Korea became decisive, Kim Gu developed his own theory, claiming that the Korean Peninsula would achieve unification through its own efforts, not under the influence of the United States or the Soviet Union, and met with Kim Il-sung of the North. However, the times were not like that at all, and Kim Il-sung did not pay any attention to them, nor did the United States. Later, when the Republic of Korea was established, they launched an opposition movement against the independent election in South Korea to decide the first president, but on August 15, 1948, the founding of the Republic of Korea was declared, and Syngman Rhee, supported by the United States, became the first president, and the following year Kim Gu was assassinated at his home. This is a rough history of Syngman Rhee and Kim Gu up to the founding of the Republic of Korea. The preamble of the current Korean constitution proclaims that it will inherit the legal lineage of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea established during the March 1st Independence Movement, and this is the legal basis for justifying anti-Japanese sentiment as a national policy, but looking at the history so far, the Korean people are probably completely unaware of the contradiction that the legitimacy of the Provisional Government was not recognized when the Republic of Korea was founded.
The Republic of Korea continued to be a dictatorship under Syngman Rhee, and although the Rhee government was overthrown by a democratization movement, a military coup led by Park Chung-hee led to a military dictatorship. Later, during the presidency of Roh Tae-woo, a declaration of democratization was made on June 29, 1987, including a direct presidential election. Due to this trend, conservatives in Korea are a political force that originated from the founding of the country by Syngman Rhee, and the left wing has the opposite nature. Within this, there is a tendency to be divided into right and left by economic factors such as prioritizing economic policy or social security. For this reason, the left wing has a communist nature and has tended to implement a conciliatory policy toward North Korea. Both are anti-Japanese in terms of the constitution, but in reality, Syngman Rhee founded South Korea through anti-Japanese means, and he purged pro-Japanese forces one after another.
On the other hand, although the left is anti-Japan, Kim Dae-jung visited Japan as a state guest, co-hosted the FIFA World Cup, lifted the ban on cultural exchange between Japan and Korea, and concluded a new Japan-Korea fisheries agreement in accordance with the revised international law regarding the Takeshima issue. After that, former President Roh Moo-hyun also visited Japan as a state guest as a left-wing president, but anti-Japanese movements in Korea became heated after that.
After President Roh Moo-hyun, two conservative presidents followed, but Lee Myung-bak is said to have remarked that the Japan-Korea currency swap was unnecessary during the currency crisis, infuriating former Prime Minister Aso, and landed on Takeshima during his term as president. Comfort women statues stand in a row, and the next former president, Park Geun-hye, is also a conservative president, but a comfort women statue has been erected in front of the Japanese Consulate General in Busan. It was during this period that comfort women statues began to be erected without any hesitation. Prior to this, the first Abe Cabinet in Japan made a cabinet decision to amend the Kono Statement, stating that there was no direct reference to the so-called forced abduction of comfort women by the military or government officials. Based on this, the 2015 comfort women agreement was reached.
After that, Moon Jae-in, who became president after the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, is a very troublesome person who has a completely different opinion from the left-wing forces so far. That is Kim Gu. Moon Jae-in has named Kim Gu as the politician he respects the most, and in 2019 after taking office, he took the incomprehensible action of holding a cabinet meeting at the Kim Gu Memorial Hall. And Lee Jae-myung, the current leader of the largest opposition party, also named Kim Gu as the politician he respects the most. Looking at it this way, the incomprehensible foreign policy of the Moon Jae-in era ironically becomes understandable. Kim Gu was a person who tried to exclude the United States and achieve the unification of North and South Korea through negotiations with the North. Moon Jae-in's policy has been to continue to move to eliminate the influence of the United States from the Korean Peninsula. The move to scrap GSOMIA can be said to be exactly that purpose. On top of that, he realized the US-North Korea-South Korea summit, suddenly made a statement at the UN that he wanted to end the Korean War, and Lee Jae-myung even made an absurd statement that Korea was divided because of the United States.
In other words, Kim Gu is symbolically positioned against Syngman Rhee as a counter-axis to conservatives. And the crucial point is that it is nothing more than Kim Gu's delusion, a fictitious history that was completely ignored by both the United States and North Korea, and it is ironic that the same result is occurring today. The problem is that half of the Korean people agree with this claim.
As for Kim Gu, the provisional government in Shanghai had no actual governance over the Korean Peninsula, and even after returning to Korea, its legitimacy was not recognized, and his independent unification route with the North was not appreciated by anyone, and there is no fact that he actually conducted politics and achieved any results. On top of that, it is Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae-myung who are inciting the people with the ultimate "what if" of what would have happened in Kim Gu's time. If we assume this fictitious history of Kim Gu, the founding of the country by Syngman Rhee would not have been established, which means that the very founding of the Republic of Korea would be denied.
In the last South Korean general election, the conservative ruling party suffered a major defeat. If this trend continues, it is certain that the next presidential election will see a left-wing president. For Japan, it is important to see that a left-wing president will simply be elected, but it is also necessary to understand that the government will be taken by a force that is plotting fundamental changes to the security issues on the Korean Peninsula and in East Asia, which have been maintained by the Japan-US and Japan-Korea security alliances established after the war.
What happened to hydrogen fluoride - South Korea claims to have overcome Japan, but what is its relationship with product defects?
Moon Jae-in wants to say we won against Japan
Japanese hydrogen fluoride has fewer impurities
Relationship between hydrogen fluoride and defective rate
Massive recalls in America
Kona EV burst into flames again
Don't worry about exploding cars
In his farewell address, former President Moon Jae-in said that all people came together to overcome the crisis caused by Japan's unfair export restrictions. However, looking at the data, of the three export control items, hydrogen fluoride has decreased by 86% compared to fiscal 2018, while other items such as photoresist and fluorinated polyimide have remained almost unchanged.
Former President Moon Jae-in has loudly declared that hydrogen fluoride has been successfully domestically produced, but regarding the quality of hydrogen fluoride, it is Japan's hydrogen fluoride is 12N (99.9999999999%). There is talk that hydrogen fluoride, which is said to have been developed by Korea's LG Chem, may be 5N. ~N is the number 9, and 12N is 12×9. In other words, Japan's hydrogen fluoride has as few impurities as 12 nines in a row.
Hydrogen fluoride is used to clean machines and processes used in precision machinery manufacturing. What happens when there are many impurities here is an increase in the product defect rate. What about the defective rate of Korean products? Whether it went up or down, if there is no change, then whether it is 12N or not has little meaning.
On August 20, 2021, the US automobile giant General Motors (GM) expanded the scope of the recall due to the risk of fire in the battery pack installed in the electric vehicle (EV) “Chevrolet Bolt EV”. announcement. As a result of this announcement, all models of the Chevrolet Bolt EV released so far are subject to a recall. The battery manufacturer for this car is LG Chem.
In January 2022, another fire occurred in the Kona EV, in which Hyundai Motors had replaced the battery due to a recall after a series of battery fires. A fire broke out while the vehicle was running and was completely destroyed. According to Korean media, internet communities, and fire authorities, a fire accident occurred in a Kona EV that was traveling on Taean Road in South Chungcheong Province at around 6:46 pm on the 11th. The accident vehicle was a 2020 model, and the battery had been replaced due to a recall in September last year.
The explosion of lithium-ion batteries was a hot topic in the past when a Sumsung smartphone exploded into flames, but now that EV cars are being developed, the large batteries used to drive the car explode and burst into flames in the blink of an eye. It is unclear whether it has anything to do with hydrogen fluoride, but there is even a rumor that some Japanese-made hydrogen fluoride is being imported from China.
It would be surprising if they were going to such lengths to protect the country's face-to-face contact, but we should continue to pay close attention to defective products from South Korea.
Death toll from Halloween Shogi chess accident in Seoul rises to 151 - Different countries respond differently to similar accidents.
Deadly accident occurs on Halloween in Seoul
Akashi fireworks festival accident for which police were held responsible
Shanghai accident started with suspicious report
China's return to people's responsibility
How will South Korea sum up this issue
The number of people killed in a shogi accident during Halloween in Seoul has increased to 151. This is the worst accident in terms of man-made disasters. This accident reminds me of the Akashi fireworks festival accident in Japan and the New Year countdown accident on the Shanghai Bund in China. Shogi accidents occur when players are pushed from behind in a crowded crowd, or when they step on someone else's foot and lose their balance. This chain causes a major accident.
This also happened during the Akashi Fireworks Festival, and 11 people died. However, it is impossible for the people who disrupted that arrangement to be held responsible. Problems with the police and security were investigated day after day, and in the end, a civil court ordered Hyogo Prefectural Police and the security company to pay damages. The conclusion is that it was foreseeable and that the necessary measures were not taken. In the criminal trial, one police officer and one security company were sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison, and 3 city employees were sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison, suspended for 5 years was found guilty.
Next, regarding the incident in Shanghai Bund, I was in Shanghai on the day of the accident. A Chinese person I spoke to the next day asked me, didn't you go to the Bund last night? I found out when I was asked. According to the news reports after the accident, 36 people were said to have died. From then on, it turned out to be a complete lie. On New Year's Eve, Shanghai was in a state of chaos, with people rushing to the point where it was difficult to walk, not only on the Bund, but also everywhere, including the station premises, and it would have been no surprise if an accident occurred anywhere. . If it was an accident during the New Year's countdown on the Bund, it was clear that 36 people would not have been there.
Afterwards, I was looking into how this incident was summarized in China, and came across an article called Expert Opinion. "Increase public awareness of safety, avoid danger, and avoid crowded places." In other words, public responsibility for gathering too much. It was not intended to hold the government or police responsible.
There was clearly a problem with the accident in Seoul, and it was a catastrophe in which many people died. Maybe it's because it happened right after the accident, but when I look at articles from South Korea, there doesn't seem to be any complaints about the lack of police or security. In Japan, a ruling after the accident increased the responsibility of the police and security companies for events where large numbers of people gather, resulting in an increase in the safety of citizens.
Shogi falling accidents occur in various countries, but the way each country views and deals with the problem is completely different. How will South Korea summarize this accident?
South Korea is furious after being told that kimchi originates from China - Do they go crazy when they are forced to do something they always do?
While watching YouTube videos about Sichuan cuisine, I suddenly noticed the controversy surrounding the origin of kimchi, which is based on Sichuan's foamed vegetables. I used to think that Sichuan cuisine was spicy because spices from western countries such as India and Pakistan were introduced, but chili peppers are native to South America, so chili peppers probably didn't exist in China.
There is a theory that it was brought to Japan when guns were introduced, or that it was brought by missionaries, but it seems that it was brought to the Korean peninsula during Hideyoshi's Bunroku and Keicho campaigns. It was the end of the 16th century. So I researched when chili peppers were introduced to Sichuan, and found that it was in the 17th century, at the end of the Ming Dynasty. I'm not sure when chili peppers began to be used in Awa Nai or Korean kimchi, but it would be a mistake to say that the current kimchi made with chili peppers originated in Sichuan Province.
If that's the case, there must be a culture of foamed vegetables using chili peppers all over China, or even on land routes to Beijing. Chinese historical debates tend to be like this. China's 3,000 years will turn into its 4,000 years the next day, but there are no excavations that have spread its culture geographically. It ends with a dot. Culture is transmitted through people as a medium.
Incidentally, as part of its national strategy, China claims that ginseng is many times more superior to Korean ginseng, and supports vast fields of ginseng. This is an economic revitalization project for the underdeveloped and ethnically diverse Yunnan province.
By the way, when I looked into the origin of chili peppers, I found that there is a record that it dates back to 6000 BC in Mexico. A little respect for Mexican chili peppers would end this debate.