Tag: Japan

UPDATE: The monk has died:

 A South Korean monk was pronounced dead on Monday, two days after he set himself on fire during a mass rally in central Seoul against the country’s impeached president, hospital officials said.

The monk identified by his surname Seo had been in serious condition since he poured inflammables on his body and burned himself at around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday during the weekly candlelight vigil joined by tens of thousands of people, according to the officials.

He, who sustained serious burns all over his body, was pronounced dead at around 7:40 p.m. Multiple organ dysfunction was cited as the main cause of death.

The police suspect the 64-year-old monk tried to commit suicide since he left what is seen as a suicide note in which he called for President Park Geun-hye to immediately step down.  [Yonhap]

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Via a reader tip comes news that Korean monk has set himself on fire in protest of the comfort women deal struck back in 2015 between Korea and Japan.  I would love to know what this guy’s mental state was at the time because I would have to think you would have to be a little but nuts to set yourself on fire:

A South Korean Buddhist monk is in critical condition after setting himself on fire to protest the country’s settlement with Japan on compensation for wartime sex slaves, officials said Sunday.

The 64-year-old monk suffered third-degree burns across his body and serious damage to vital organs. He’s unconscious and unable to breathe on his own, said an official from the Seoul National University Hospital, who didn’t want to be named citing office rules.

The man set himself ablaze late Saturday during a large rally in Seoul calling for the ouster of impeached President Park Geun-hye, police said. In his notebook, the man called Park a “traitor” over her government’s 2015 agreement with Japan that sought to settle a long-standing row over South Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan’s World War II military, police said.  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link, but I think Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe makes a fair point that this agreement should be implemented regardless of leadership changes as a matter of “creditability”.

The Japanese government has responded to the installation of a comfort woman statue in front of their consulate in Busan:

South Korea expressed “strong regret” over steps taken by Japan on Friday, including recalling its ambassador, in protest against a statue recently set up in front of its consulate office to shed light on its wartime atrocities of forcing women into sexual slavery.

“We express our strong regret over the action taken by Japan with regard to the statue,” the foreign ministry said in a comment issued in the name of its spokesman.

“The government wants to make it clear again that both countries should keep advancing their bilateral ties based on trust regardless of any challenging issues,” it added.

Earlier, Japan decided to temporarily call in Yasumasa Nagamine, its ambassador to South Korea, in protest against the statue installed at the end of last year by a civic group in front of its Consulate General building in the southern port city of Busan. He will likely return to Japan next week.

Tokyo also announced a halt to the ongoing negotiation on a currency swap agreement between the two countries — an emergeny channel of and the postponement of a high-level economic cooperation meeting.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link, but I am still waiting for the installation of a statue in front of the Chinese embassy in protest of all the modern day Korean comfort women in that country that these activist groups don’t care about.

Most former Korean 'comfort women' accepted 2015 apology & compensation from Japan. Activists did not. https://t.co/GXeKleLuP3

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) January 6, 2017

Kim Bok-dong (L), a victim of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, approaches a statue of her during the 1,264th “Wednesday rally” in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Jan. 4, 2017, a weekly protest which victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery and activists have held since 1992. (Yonhap)

As I have said before, the installation of this statue is needlessly provocative against Japan which has apologized an offered compensation multiple times for its past wartime activities.  If these activist groups really cared about sexual slavery then they would be putting up a statue in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul in protest of the modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China.  However, that would take real courage because China will retaliate unlike Japan that these activists know will just continue to take it:

A civic group installed a statue of a girl symbolizing the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in front of the Japanese Consulate in South Korea’s largest port city of Busan on Friday after the Dong Ward municipality gave its approval.

The ward municipality agreed earlier in the day to let the civic group install the statue on the sidewalk about 40 meters away from the consulate’s back door.

It marked the second of its kind established in front of Japan’s overseas diplomatic missions after one was installed in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

“We will not stop the civic group from installing the statue in front of the consulate if they wish to do so,” Park Sam-seok, chief of the municipality, said at a press conference.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Installing this statue outside the Japanese consulate in Busan seems needlessly provocative to me.  If these activist groups are so concerned about sexual slavery then they should be putting up statues in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul in protest of the modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China:

Dozens of members from a civic group without authorization attempted to install a statue of a girl symbolizing the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in South Korea’s largest port city of Busan, but the attempt was foiled due to opposition from officials and police.

The group tried to set up the statue on the sidewalk in front of the back door of the Japanese Consulate shortly after a weekly rally around 12:30 p.m. calling for the Japanese government to offer an apology and compensation for its wartime sexual enslavement of Asian women, many of whom were Korean.

As many as 150 activists from the group staged the rally to protest a Seoul-Tokyo landmark deal in December last year in which Tokyo apologized for its colonial-era atrocities and agreed to provide 1 billion yen (US$9.4 million) for the creation of a foundation aimed at supporting the victims, euphemistically called comfort women.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Participants to the decade-long weekly protest calling for Japan’s apology for the Japanese army’s forcible sexual slavery of Korean women during World War II in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul march toward the foreign ministry while holding up the portraits of the deceased sexual slaves, called “comfort women,” on Dec. 28, 2016. They called for the nullification of the Korea-Japan agreement on comfort women signed last year. (Yonhap)

For those that have visited the Yushukan Museum located adjacent to the highly controversial Yasukuni-jinja Shrine, there is definitely an alternative history of World War II taught in Japan. The majority of people in Japan do believe that the Imperial Japanese militarism was a great folly, but there are people who believe the history taught at the Yushukan Museum that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was to preempt an American attack on Japan and liberate Asian people from western colonialism:

The Pearl Harbor attack that led the United States into WWII is normally a historical footnote in Japan, rarely discussed on anniversaries or in depth at schools.

That changed when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced he would visit Pearl Harbor with President Barack Obama on Dec. 27 to offer “comfort to the souls of the victims.”

Most Japanese today view the war as a great folly. The clause in Japan’s constitution that renounces the nation’s right to wage war has taken root so deeply that even new, restrictive laws allowing Japan to defend its allies were viewed with suspicion last year.

However, some divergent perspectives over history remain among two of the world’s closest allies.

Americans are taught that the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked sneak attack.

The view among some Japanese, and particularly among some otherwise pro-U.S. alliance conservatives, is that a Western economic embargo forced Japan’s hand.

By 1941, Japan controlled large parts of China and other parts of Asia. In July, its military occupied parts of Southeast Asia, including a key port in what is now Vietnam.

The U.S., Britain and The Netherlands responded by freezing Japanese assets in their countries, which included access to most of Japan’s oil supply.

“Indeed, the oil embargo cornered Japan,” Emperor Hirohito said in an audio memoir recorded shortly after the 1945 surrender. The memoir was found in 1990 by the Bungei Shunju magazine and then translated by The New York Times.

“Once the situation had come to this point, it was natural that advocacy for going to war became predominant,” Hirohito said. “If, at that time, I suppressed opinions in favor of war, public opinion would have certainly surged, with people asking questions about why Japan should surrender so easily when it had a highly efficient army and navy, well trained over the years.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but the best book I have read about the period before the attack on Pearl Harbor is Eri Hotta’s: Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy.  I highly recommend ROK Heads read this book to really understand why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  The Japanese had opportunities to keep parts of their Chinese and Korean colonies if they would withdraw from other areas of China and Southeast Asia as demanded by the US and its allies. How different would things be today if Japan had been allowed to continue the colonization of Korea and parts of China?

There was actually a lot of dissenting opinions in Japan, but the militarists eventually were able to convince enough people they could replicate the success of the Russo-Japanese War with a decisive naval victory against the US at Pearl Harbor.  As history has shown the bombing of Pearl Harbor became one of the great misjudgments in military history.

Regardless of the history involved it is good to see Prime Minister Abe finally make the visit to Pearl Harbor and hopefully put an end to any remaining hard feelings about World War II.

Trump is reportedly considering former Mets and Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine as U.S. ambassador to Japan. https://t.co/QSI5h6SPch pic.twitter.com/qRbAYm5ZSL

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) December 10, 2016

This is pretty symbolic of how much has changed in 75 years:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbor with U.S. President Barack Obama at the end of this month, becoming the first leader of his country to go to the U.S. Naval base in Hawaii attacked by Japan in 1941, propelling the United States into World War II.

Monday’s unexpected announcement came two days before the 75th anniversary of the attack and six months after Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the memorial in Hiroshima for victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of that city at the end of the same war.

Abe, in a brief statement to reporters, said he would visit Hawaii on Dec. 26 and 27 to pray for the war dead at Pearl Harbor and to hold a final summit meeting with Obama before the latter’s presidency ends.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.