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[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Excerpt:

A few years back, I received a mystifying email from five Japanese professors. It was only after the incident itself that I found out that they sent the same email not only to myself, but to many other professors in Germany.

The email made the preposterous claim that Germany and Japan never committed war crimes in World War II, and that we should strive to correct fraudulent historical statements.

I was well aware of the fact that there were reactionary extremist groups in Japan who wanted to cover up the crimes against humanity committed during the Japanese colonial period and World War II, and that they also wanted to rewrite their country’s history.

However, I was gobsmacked to see the ludicrous calls to completely disregard the historical facts of the Nazis’ horrors and to subscribe to their warped historical revisionism.

The Statue of Peace, which symbolizes the countless number of young girls and women who were systematically forced into prostitution and even murdered in large numbers, would’ve irked these professors as it was a reminder of the war crimes Japan committed during its colonization of Korea. This is why they accuse the civic activists who erected the statue of being anti-Japanese and pro-North Korea.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the behavior of the Japanese right wing, but what’s truly shocking is that some Koreans also sympathize with these gross historical distortions.