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An Jung-geun's son An Jun-seong, who assassinated Ito Hirobumi. The reconciliation that took place at the Gyeongseong Chosun Hotel and the man named Kim Gu who could not be forgiven
I think everyone knows about Ito Hirobumi. He was assassinated at Harbin Station on October 26, 1909, the year before the Japan-Korea Annexation. The man who carried out the assassination was An Jung-geun. He is still a hero in Korea. On October 15, 1939, a certain person visited a temple called Hakubunji Temple in Korea, which no longer exists, to offer a memorial service. It was An Jung-geun's son, An Jun-seong. He visited as part of a Korean Peninsula Manchuria ship inspection team from Shanghai. The purpose was to offer a memorial service for Ito Hirobumi, who was murdered by his father, An Jung-geun.
The memorial service began at 11:00 and An Jung-geun's memorial tablet was placed next to Ito Hirobumi's portrait. An Jun-seong offered a memorial service for his father An Jung-geun and Ito Hirobumi, and Komada, who recited a sutra, handed An Jung-geun's memorial tablet to him and advised him to mourn the souls of the two men forever.
Afterwards, An Toshio told a reporter who had come to interview him. He lost his father at a young age and neglected to perform the rituals for 30 years. He now prays for the repose of Prince Ito's soul and is happy to receive his father's memorial tablet.
■english subtitles available
The next day, on the 16th, An Toshio headed to the Gyeongseong Chosun Hotel. He was there to meet someone. The person he was meeting was Ito Bunkichi, the son of Ito Hirobumi. In response to An Toshio's request to apologize to Ito Bunkichi, Ito Bunkichi replied: "Our father has already become a god, a Buddha, and returned to the sky." What do we need to apologize for now? Let's be sincere and serve our country instead.
Then, on the following day, the 17th, Ito Bunkichi and An Toshio visited Hakubunji Temple and performed an exchange memorial service for each other's fathers. In Korea, it is firmly believed that Ito Hirobumi was a proponent of the Seikanron, which is Japan's conquest and rule of Korea. Why does it have to be this way? It is thought that Koreans mistakenly believe that Ito was a proponent of the Japan-Korea Annexation because Ito was the governor-general of the Government-General of Korea. However, Ito Hirobumi was opposed to the Japan-Korea Annexation throughout.
An Jung-geun assassinated Ito Hirobumi without even knowing his face. In his autobiography, he clearly wrote that he did not know Ito's face. Ito was no longer the Prime Minister or the Governor-General at the time. He took responsibility for the failure of the policy of reconciliation with Korea and resigned. An Jung-geun shot and killed Ito Hirobumi at Harbin Station. An Jung-geun was arrested on the spot, and after being sentenced to death in court, he said in prison that he had made a serious mistake.
In 1939, An Jung-geun's son An Jun-seong held a memorial service for Ito at Hakubunji Temple, met with Ito's son Ito Bunkichi at the Chosun Hotel, apologized, and reconciled. Kim Gu, an independence activist, could not forgive this. At the time, Kim Gu was an important member of the anti-Japanese Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, and the following year in 1940, he became its chairman. An Jun-seong ran a pharmacy in Shanghai, but Kim Gu framed An Jun-seong for the trumped-up charge of selling opium and asked Chiang Kai-shek, the head of the Republic of China at the time, to execute him. It seems that he was quite angry, but what does this mean? Kim Gu was furious that An Jung-geun's son apologized for the murder of his father, Ito Hirobumi, and that he spoke about it in front of the media. An Jung-geun must be a hero. He must be used as a hero for the anti-Japanese independence movement. This was the hope of the forces seeking independence.
In other words, to them, Ito Hirobumi is a proponent of the Japanese-Korean annexation, and should not be the subject of reconciliation. It is not that Koreans have misunderstood somewhere and think that Ito Hirobumi promoted the Japan-Korea annexation, but it is clearly fabricated by the system. The fact that Ito was against the annexation. That An Jung-geun did not even know what Ito looked like. That An Jung-geun said that the assassination was a serious mistake. The fact that the surviving family has already reconciled should not be known in Korea. And it can be said that even today, there are very few Koreans who know this fact. In order to keep An Jung-geun a hero, Ito Hirobumi will forever be a proponent of the Japanese-Korean annexation and an enemy of Korea.
On January 28, 2023, a survey by the Korea Cinema Ticketing Network announced that "Hero," a movie based on An Jung-geun, which was released on December 21 of the previous year, had exceeded 3 million viewers in the 38 days since its release. Three million people is about 5.8% of the population of South Korea.
the next presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol: The relationship between Korea and Japan has deteriorated to the worst level since the normalization of diplomatic relations.Diplomacy should be based on pragmatism and realism, but it has come to this point because of its ideological bias of "bamboo spear songs."The Moon administration is trying to sort things out at the end of the administration, but it seems to have failed.
Li Nak-yeon: I can't believe his recognition when I hear he said about bamboo spears.It was shocking that he made such absurd remark that is shallow historical understanding at Yoon Bong-gil Memorial Hall .
Lee Jae-myung: Japan, an aggressor, should have been divided, but Korea, a victim of Japan's invasion, was divided.
The next presidential election will also be a match between Japan and South Korea.For Japan, Yoon Seok-yeol is better for Japan to pursue diplomacy, but I personally think if the other two would be President Japan should recognize as a hostile country beyond anti-Japanese and historical issues.
In the first place, Japan has nothing to do with the Korean presidential election.Korea should Focus on internal affairs.Either way, Japan will only respond accordingly.Because it's a foreign country.
It's okay to win even if you commit a foul. Don't expect anything from a country with a different concept of sports.
In Japan, there is no question that sports are played to train the mind and body, and this is sought after in all walks of life. On top of that, the champions of each sport are also expected to have good personalities, so Japanese people are very careful when interviewing the winners.
Physical education is distinguished from sports in that it incorporates physical exercise as a part of education and aims not only to train the body but also to improve the mind and personality. Sports are said to be purely about enjoying the competition and the wins and losses. In order to have fun, you can only enjoy victory and defeat within the fairness that comes from following the rules. It is also expressed as sportsmanship.
If you think about whether Korea does physical education or sports, unfortunately it seems like they are failing at both. Even though it is said that political statements should not be brought into sports, athletes who can't stand it anymore and make a big fuss over the Rising Sun flag or claim territory on the field are seen as heroes. He doesn't mind taking fouls in order to win. Do they think that the rules are something that is followed when the referee is watching? There is no concept of sportsmanship here.
I'm sure some people will argue that this is something that some players do, but the relative number of fouls committed by Korean players is too high. And that is what athletes who participate in international competitions do. As I wrote at the beginning, in Japan, sports are viewed as physical education from elementary school onwards, and the higher a player becomes, the more they continue to train, and as a representative of the country, they are expected to act without shame. It can be said that there are almost no players who commit such foul acts when they reach the level of participating in international tournaments.
It is said that all sports are supervised by an organization called the Korea Athletic Association, but it seems that they are more passionate about anti-Japan activities than athletics, and that way of thinking is quite different even internationally.
Voting for South Korea's unified local elections was held on June 1st, with the ruling party
Local elections won by the ruling party
Local administration launches anti-Japanese movement
The president is the head of the executive branch
Twisted power runs amok
Efforts to improve relationships are always destroyed
Adopts resolution that violates international commitments
South Korea cannot keep its promises
Voting for South Korea's unified local elections was held on June 1st, with the ruling party "People's Power" winning 12 out of 17 regions, and the "Tomo Democratic Party" winning 4 regions including Jeolla Province and Gyeonggi Province by a narrow margin. It is reported that the ruling party won by a landslide, winning only five regions. This appears to be a trend that will lead to a resolution of the kinks between local government, the president, and the cabinet.
The No Japan movement was largely led by local governments. Gyeonggi Province, Seoul City, and Busan City have passed ordinances stipulating ``war criminal company stickers'' or ``restrictions on the purchase of war criminal company products.'' This is a surprising ordinance that places stickers on the products of Japanese companies that have been unilaterally labeled as war criminal companies, and restricts the use and purchase of those products in government agencies and schools.
Local governments in South Korea not only decide local leaders, but also exercise a variety of powers, including issuing ordinances that can lead to diplomatic issues between countries.
Regarding the ban on imports from Fukushima Prefecture, fishing organizations in coastal areas such as Busan are putting tremendous pressure on local governments. This is a local economic issue, and we do not want to import Japanese seafood to South Korea. This is to protect Korean fishing organizations. It is clear from the beginning that this is not a scientific problem.
The president assumes the position of head of the executive branch. Since the president is the head of state who is directly elected by the votes of all citizens, he is given great powers, unlike the prime minister in a parliamentary system.
In a parliamentary system, the leader of the parliament with the largest majority is elected prime minister. Therefore, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the Diet, which is the legislative branch, will not be distorted. If anything could be twisted, the House of Representatives and the House of Councilors would be twisted.
In South Korea, the current president is Yun Seok-Yeol, who ran for office based on ``the power of the people,'' and the Democratic Party of Korea holds 58% of the seats in the National Assembly, the legislative body. In other words, even if the president uses his prerogatives, Congress can pass one bill after another to nullify them.
Substantive exchanges between Japan and South Korea began in 1998, when the Japan-Korea Joint Declaration was signed. Until then, Japanese culture, anime, manga, dramas, etc. had been prohibited in South Korea, but this declaration will lift the ban on these. It was also during this period that Korean dramas and K-POP began to flow into Japan.
Also known as the Obuchi-Kim Dae-jung Declaration, it was a declaration that comprehensively resolved the Japan-Korea issue, including the joint hosting of the 2002 FIFA World Cup between Japan and Korea and the conclusion of a new fisheries agreement regarding the Takeshima issue. It will be deactivated immediately thereafter.
On July 18, 2001, the South Korean parliament passed a unanimous resolution calling on the South Korean government to abolish the Japan-Korea Joint Declaration. Then, a large number of Korean fishing boats appeared near Takeshima, and the territorial issue reignited and continues to this day, and the activities of civil society groups on issues such as the forced labor issue and the comfort women issue further expanded. This is despite the fact that the World Cup was co-hosted by Japan and South Korea in 2002.
Will Congress vote to invalidate the president's diplomatic promises with other countries? Such unbelievable things happen in the South Korean National Assembly.
This has hardly been reported in Japan. Japan was united towards the success of the Japan-Korea joint World Cup. And during the match of this tournament, an incident occurs where Korean players criticize the Rising Sun flag and promote Takeshima as Korean territory. The premise behind this was that South Korea was already trying to revoke the 1998 Joint Declaration.
In South Korea, the president's powers will only be effectively exercised if he wins the presidential election and unified local elections, and the ``power of the people'' wins the national election in 2024.
The issue of South Korean ships conducting investigations around Takeshima shortly before and immediately after the presidential inauguration became a problem. In other words, South Korea is not even equipped to keep its promises..
This is especially noticeable in anti-Japanese groups. In South Korea, members of both the ruling and opposition parties are basically anti-Japanese.. Even if the Diet tries to improve relations with Japan as a matter of policy, if its practical interests are endangered, it will easily turn into an anti-Japanese Diet.
In Japan, if things are twisted, things will not be decided, but in Korea, twisted power begins to run amok. It is an uncontrolled rampage that continues even if international agreements are broken.
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.
