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South Korea Punishes People For Ancestors’ Crimes

Most countries in the world do not punish people for crimes committed by their parents or grandparents. However, things are apparently different in South Korea, where the government is taking action to punish 168 descendants of people said to have helped the Japanese maintain colonial rule over the Korean peninsula. In some cases, the government will seize property from people because of events that took place over 100 years ago:

“This whole process has been very important to the government and people of the older generations, in particular, because there was a feeling that these people had not been punished for what they did to their homeland at that time,” Lee Seokwoo, a professor of law at Incheon’s Inha University, told The Daily Telegraph.

“And the amounts of land being seized are huge, showing just how much these people did profit from collaborating,” he said.

“The timing of the commission’s conclusion is also significant as this year marks the 100th anniversary of the annexation of the Korean Peninsula and this process is needed to remember those events,” he said.

[...]

The proceeds from the assets that have been confiscated will be distributed to the families of resistance fighters and to support projects commemorating the independence movement, the commission said.

“The efforts to hold pro-Japan collaborators accountable for their wrongdoings of the past should have been made earlier,” Kim Chang-kuk, chairman of the commission, said. “The commission’s activities leave a message for future generations that treacherous deeds must be disciplined, not bounded by time.”

That message, it would seem, is that anyone can face punishment if it is deemed that one of their ancestors did something bad 100 years ago. Also, those who were in a position to punish collaborators 60 years ago and deliberately decided not to are free of any responsibility for their actions.

The confiscation of property is part of a movement in South Korea that has included the publication of an official “Dictionary of Collaborators,” which limits the number of Koreans who significantly cooperated with Japan to 4,389 people (thus allowing everyone not related to those people to nationalistically pat themselves on the back and not have any feeling of having helped the Japanese).

{democracy:461}

While the South Korean government has spent the last few years launching official investigations into the “truth” about collaboration with Japan, it has also taken some actions to improve the status of a certain group of collaborators. In 2006, the a government commission cleared 83 of 148 Koreans convicted by the Allies of war crimes during World War II. The list of “innocent” people was mostly made up of prison guards who had been convicted of torturing and killing Allied POW’s.

—

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68 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - July 16, 2010 at 10:11 am

Categories: Anti-Japan Tags:

https://www.google.com/profiles/xperroni Helio

Typical. Truth and the rule of law are tramped over whenever it is politicaly convenient. However, in that the Korean government is not that different from their Japanese and Chinese counterparts; so perhaps there is hope for reciprocal understanding after all? ^_~

Fat Tony

Great. Now what South Korea needs to do is deprive those people who collaborated with the evil dictatorships of Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan of their property.

Level3

So, how many of you who voted “unfair”, but support Affirmative Action and other race-based quota systems?

I suppose we could congratulate the Koreans on actually linking people by name to possible cases of people gaining wealth through collaborating, younger generations who might actually still possess the fruits of those deeds. (But what’s the statute of limitations on this insanity, 100 years isn’t enough? Can the descendants buy their way off the list?)

Now I just wonder, if you find THAT unfair, then how the hell is it fair that I, a descendant of Europeans who went to the USA after slavery ended, should have a worse shot at a job than a wealthier person whose family immigrated from Africa 20 years ago, all in an increasingly unjustifiable scheme to make up for past injustices. Follow the Korean example and track down descendants of slave owners and punish them. Not me.

OK, now give me thumbs down and call me a racist.
But before you do so, please explain yourself.
How is the Korean law unfair but racial quotas are fair?
Level3

OK, if you think this is unfair, but still support Affirmative Action and other race-based quotas, please explain to me your thought process.

Dan

I don’t actually support Affirmative Action, but the impression I got is that the intention is not to punish, but to basically give minorities whose communities are behind the curve in society a leg up because when you start lagging behind it is harder to catch up.

This policy is just to outright punish individuals for the actions of their dead relatives.

Level3

I can see that thinking, but in any selective/competitive process, awarding jobs, scholarships, government contracts, etc. : when you “give a leg up” to someone, the result is little different than punishing the other guy by an equal amount.

The 100m dash is often used as an analogy. If you let one runner start 20m ahead, the result is not much different than if you make the other runner start 20m behind.
One difference is the race-fixer feels better about himself in the former case.
Other difference is in the first case, the runner who gets the 20m head start never learns how to run a proper 100m.

But anyway, race based preferences would be a LOT easier to swallow if they had an expiration date. Is 100 years not enough? 150? 200? How many generations should cash in on the suffering of their ancestors? More importantly,how many generations can cash in on (or be held liable for) suffering of wholly unrelated other peoples’ ancestors merely because they have a coincidental skin color?
At least the Koreans seem to be getting this point “fair”.

Which again raises the question. If the Korean method which directly punishes the actual descendants in NOT fair, then how is a racial quota system which punishes all people of certain skin colors, even if there is no historic link at all, “fair”? I’m sure many of you feel it is fair. Please explain before you give a thumbs down.

Dan

Well this is a pretty big derailment, but the difference again is the intent of the action (AA is providing a handicap, this is retribution) and also that this singles out individuals.

But as I said, this is a pretty big derailment. You’re calling out Affirmative Action supporters who may or may not even exist on this board just to stir the pot with some American political issue.
Hanenosuke

Except (keeping with Level3′s “race” analogy) that the guy running 80m has been prevented from training for his entire life.

http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/black-powers-gonna-get-you-sucka-right-wing-paranoia-and-rhetoric-modern-racism
Robin

Hanenosuke – that was one of the best essays I’ve ever read. Thanks a lot for the link.
cesar

@ Harenosuke

it’s a quite intriguind essay, to say the least

the author recognizes that race is important. He says that a lot of things happens because of race. He goes and argues that when you do something beneficial for a race other than caucasian you’re actually doing something good

but then accuses white people of being racist

weird thinking bro

Robin

Level 3, nobody has it easier than us White Americans. Nobody. Giving a helping hand to the people we have shi**ed on for CENTURIES is only fair.

People like you are the ones that give us a bad name, the ones who forget that the country we call home was built on stolen ground. We have been reaping the benefits of other people’s pain for too long, it’s only fair we give something back.

Try reading a book on the history of America and have a think about how “unfair” Affirmative Action is.

JMUHOBO

What are you YAPPING about? Society has been built of the blood and sweat and lives of many different individuals. EVERY damn country in the world have had wars by either taking more land or expanding there territory.

The only people that the American Nation “took” land from was the Native Americans. But guess what That’s HISTORY. READ ANY HISTORY of any country and you will find very simliar passages. Don’t forget the Spaniards, French, British all had colonies in the new world.

So should we punish every single individual who were decedent of these people? Should we have you pay for your great great grandfather’s crime?

Deepspacebeans

I’m sorry, Jmuhobo, but are you honestly unaware of the Spanish-American war? or the Philippine-American war? The overthrow of the kingdom of Hawaii? American Samoa? The Marshall Islands? What about Palau? Micronesia? Guam?

You also use quotation marks when you said took. Are you not of the opinion that the Native Americans had their land stolen from them through unequal treaties and brute military force?

This line of argumentation that, “well everyone was doing it at the time” does not lessen the horrors inflicted upon former and current colonies by the great imperialist superpowers regardless of the scale of such afflictions.

As a citizen of Canada, a nation which is still giving reparations to our native American population, I perhaps see the matter a little differently. The idea should not be to punish the living ancestors of the perpetrators of these actions, since blame cannot be hereditary. Rather, we are best to examine society and conclude as to whether or not we, as a whole, still benefit from injustices of the past. In the example of stolen Native American land, this is certainly the case and thus, some form of reparations are owed by society. This reasoning is, I believe, also a good basis for determining the legitimacy of affirmative action.

In the case of confiscating the property of descendants of Korean collaborators, I cannot find a rational justification. This is the reverse of the mentality seen above. However, it is also a large part of the post-colonial mentality, along with the nationalist mumbo-jumbo that comes along with it. At least we can all be thankful for the almost satirical cognitive dissonance between foreign policy and national rhetoric/policies in regards to Japan.
kman

The overthrow of the kingdom of Hawaii, lol. I lived in Hawaii for ten years growing up and heard that nonesenese . I also took mandatory hawaiian history classes in middle school. They had a 60 man army, liloukalani got forcedinto annexation, no fighting, no blood spilled, give me a break. On public access there are still people protesting and demanding soviernty while at the same time they are about 60 lbs overweight, wearing nike t shirts and tons of makeup. As a white male that is 25 percent native american I can tell you without hestitation that the annexation of hawaii involved no fighting or any deaths. If the United States didnt take hawaii then everyone would be Japanese there now and all the hawaiians would have been wiped out.
As far as affirmative action goes, its bullshit. Just because I look 100 percent white I get placed in a category unless I check off native american on a listt, which I dont. You know why? because I look white, I ate white and even saying that im native american just seems like a cop out.

tokyojesusfist

Level 3, nobody has it easier than us White Americans. Nobody. Giving a helping hand to the people we have shi**ed on for CENTURIES is only fair.
Who exactly has shitted on who? No person alive today was the victim or perpetrator of slavery. The days of segregation are fading into history as well, and the people who most vocally complain about them weren’t even around at the time. Also, what really screwed African Americans over was not segregation or anything like that, but social welfare. Affirmative action is just a continuation of that.

People like you are the ones that give us a bad name, the ones who forget that the country we call home was built on stolen ground. We have been reaping the benefits of other people’s pain for too long, it’s only fair we give something back.
Yes, let’s keep crying about something that happened hundreds of years ago (in a vastly different era) and cannot ever be reversed. Does this pity party have a statute of limitations? Are my hypothetical grand-grand-grand-grand children going to be listening to this drivel too?

Try reading a book on the history of America and have a think about how “unfair” Affirmative Action is.
I think you should also read such a book, since you seem to be under the impression that America was stolen from African slaves or something.

Robin

Are you so short-sighted that you cannot see how we are reaping the benefits of slavery today? Is it OK to benefit from slavery that happened in the past, yet not to feel the need to apologize for such slavery? You seem to think that slavery was something that took place in a very distant age – but you’re only looking at it from the perspective of the very short “history” of America. There are universities in Europe that are older than America. From a world perspective on history, African / Chinese slavery in America wasn’t all that long ago.

As for the days of segregation having faded, when was the last time you were in America? It’s incredibly segregated, both socially and economically, especially when compared to the likes of countries such as England.

The continual wrongs that we’ve done without remorse are the reasons why pretty much every country in the world hates us. You do realize that, don’t you?
tokyojesusfist

Are you so short-sighted that you cannot see how we are reaping the benefits of slavery today?

How are you going to stop benefiting from something that stopped occuring in the late 19th century? It’s over. It’s ancient history. There’s nothing anyone can do about it today. Time to move on.

Is it OK to benefit from slavery that happened in the past, yet not to feel the need to apologize for such slavery?

You can’t be serious. All white people ever do is go around profusely apologizing for every real and imagined injustice they or their ancestors or fellow white people may or may not have inflicted on some non-white people in the past.

You seem to think that slavery was something that took place in a very distant age – but you’re only looking at it from the perspective of the very short “history” of America.

Because that’s what we were talking about. Slavery in ancient Greece or Joseon Korea is not relevant.

As for the days of segregation having faded, when was the last time you were in America? It’s incredibly segregated, both socially and economically, especially when compared to the likes of countries such as England.

Do you know what “segregation” refers to?

The continual wrongs that we’ve done without remorse are the reasons why pretty much every country in the world hates us. You do realize that, don’t you?

It’s difficult to realize things that aren’t true.

cariocas27

I assume that you are a caucasian male?

1. Race-based quotas are put into action as a radical formula for improving the social inequalities of a group of people in a society who have been disenfranchised and unfairly kept in a disadvantaged position of society.

African-Americans and Native-Americans have always had to work at a -10 handicap (using video game terminology) in relation to their Caucasian counterparts as a result of the fact that the US was built on the backs of SLAVES.

Even when slavery was outlawed, Blacks and Natives were seen as less-human, less-qualified to do anything that a White person could do. They were kept in menial jobs, did not have the connections to attain higher positions of power AND were lawfully discriminated against in the South for many years.

The law may say people are equal but until the attitudes of many white people in power change towards ethnic minorities, Race-based quotas will be a necessity.

It is extremely naive and disingenuous to expect ethnic minorities to compete on an equal footing with Whites when Whites have the connections, the capital and the lobbying that unfairly benefits them ONLY.

2. Care to explain how you think South Korea punishing people for ancestor’s crimes and affirmative action are in any way related to each other?

Perhaps both somehow include the concept of ancestry and dealing with the past HOWEVER the reasoning is completely different for the following reasons:

a) South Korea aims to PUNISH the minority of people who are related to collaborators whereas Affirmative Action aims to HELP ethnic minorities compete on an equal playing ground as the White majority by giving them an advantage as a counterweight to the influence and connections that White people have in all aspects of life in the United States.

b) We are dealing with two completely different issues here: Political system (Korea and former collaborators) VS Social development and Culture (Affirmative Action the United States). The former is easier to change than the latter…..

Michael

In a way, this makes sense in a Korean context. Usually, wealth in Korea trickles down from one generation to the next and people don’t tend to care about anyone outside of their families (if you wondered why Koreans are often such rude, arrogant jerks, that’s why). Thus if you’re rich, or poor, or powerful, it’s because of what your parents did. It kinda makes sense to punish people for their parents’ crimes, although it is obviously completely wrong.
sublight

I guess this answers the question, “when will Korea stop playing the victim card?”

Answer: Never. When ten generations have come and gone since the war, Korea will still be trying to deflect attention from its own political and economic woes by dragging out the ‘Blame Japan’ tactic. And when nobody but Koreans is involved, they’ll start in with ‘your ancestors were less anti-Japan than my ancestors, so gimme!’
sublight

And I would really like to hear the justification from the ones who voted that this was fair.

Jim

In NZ the public stills pays renumeration to the native people who had their land stolen/conquered through war, unfair sales, and broken treaties… The whole NZ public suffers through increased taxation and public spending to a small group of people wronged by those born many many many years before, and for most of NZ’s population who have no connection to these long past events as they immigrated long after this all took place, they still need to pay…
Should the Suharto family had to return their billions stolen from the indoneasian people… Yes but the new government was to weak…
The Madoff family, etc…
In this case the whole Korean people were cheated by a handful of others whose families still continue to gain from property stolen by their ancestors… Nothing is cut and dry and i feel some compensation should be given, however these families have gained substantially from the actions of their ancestors now considered traitors.

Fat Tony

I don’t think the two cases are really comparable. In New Zealand you had an entity–the Crown (that is, the state)–depriving other entities–iwi (that is tribes)–of their land and possessions. That the Crown recognized the tribes by a treaty which dictated the legal procedure for buying and selling land off them is also significant, as is the fact that those entities still exist.

In the Korean case we have a government which never existed (or, if you believe it did, it did not possess sovereign authority at the time) passing judgment on the citizens it only acquired after the fact. Those citizens were probably acting legally at the time. And I’m not entirely sure, but collaboration may well have been fairly innocuous in many cases as well. In certain circumstances “collaboration” in this case, might well have improved the lot of some Korean members of the Empire apart from the collaborators.

Having written, what would be in a Japanese context, fairly nationalistic remarks, I must say, I am a bit concerned about the lengths Japan Probe is going to lately to bash Korea. This is obviously a dick move on the part of Korea, but it doesn’t really hurt anybody except Koreans.

Noon

That happens in Australia too, The Aborigines punish the white people by not working and being bludgers, because they cant get over us taking over there land which happened 100′s of years ago.

nagoriyuki

I think that’s totally different from this case.
Who do you mean “the white people” are? Race or persons?
It’s 100% OK that government compensates the people for some past suffering.
You can make a complaint like that only when your government begins to punish you individually and levy your personal property just because your ancestors had persecuted the aboriginals.

Connie_BOS

When Japan annexed Korea 100 years ago, it effectively cut off
the ties between China and Korea.

What if Japan did not annex Korea? What kind of influence can
the present-day China (Communist China, that is) have on Korea?

keiko

If Japan had not annexed Korea, Russia woud have taken it over anyway. The Russo-Japanese war was fought over the control of Korea. The formal annexation took place right after the war. If Russia had won the war, Korea would still be part of Russia and the Korean standard of living under the Russian rule would be not so much different from that of Russians living in the Far East Russia.

Max

And why would Russia want to annex Korea, a highly nationalistic country with an entirely different language? The USSR let go of Finland because they sent a mission to Lenin and simply asked for it, how do you think they’d hold on to Korea? There’s a big difference between the kind of empire in Russia and the colonial empires in Japan, England, France, Germany, Belgium, etc.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

And why would Russia want to annex Korea, a highly nationalistic country with an entirely different language? The USSR let go of Finland because they sent a mission to Lenin and simply asked for it, how do you think they’d hold on to Korea? There’s a big difference between the kind of empire in Russia and the colonial empires in Japan, England, France, Germany, Belgium, etc.

Go tell that to the millions of non-Russian people in central and Northeast Asia who fell under the domination of the Russian empire. The early USSR may have let Finland go, but they crushed other independence movements. You might want to read up on how the Russians had a way of dealing with the troubling existence of ethnic groups that were seen as a threat.
Max

Be more specific. When has the USSR forcibly annexed a sovereign country or taken away any member state’s right to secession? The Constitution of the USSR had one of the most lax secession provisions in the world – basically any member state had the right to secede, which all of them, including Georgia, did after 1990. The rules didn’t have to be changed, they were already in place. So how could they have kept a nationalistic country like Korea in the USSR? It’s absurd.
http://www.japanprobe.com James

Be more specific.

The Wikipedia links are right there in the previous comment. Here is a quote from the linked article about how Georgia became a member of the USSR:

In February 1921 Georgia was attacked by the Red Army. The Georgian army was defeated and the Social-Democrat government fled the country. On February 25, 1921 the Red Army entered capital Tbilisi and installed a Moscow directed communist government, led by Georgian Bolshevik Filipp Makharadze.

Nevertheless the Soviet rule was firmly established only after a 1924 revolt was brutally suppressed. Georgia was incorporated into the Transcaucasian SFSR uniting Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The TSFSR was disaggregated into its component elements in 1936 and Georgia became the Georgian SSR.

In addition Soviet Union also did not allow Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to remain independent after they had left the Russian empire. The USSR had no problem dealing with & brutally crushing nationalist movements. These states were originally forced to become members of the USSR and they left in 1990 because huge changes in the political situation finally made it possible for them to secede without fear of being re-conquered.
Max

Granted, but there’s a huge leap from taking over Georgia and the Baltic states, which had no real sovereignty for half a millenium, to an established sovereign nation, and completely different culture, like Korea. There’s no historical record of the Russians ever contemplating such a thing. The argument is as absurd as suggesting “the Americans conquered the Indians, so FDR probably wanted to conquer France after Normandy”.
http://www.japanprobe.com James

Granted, but there’s a huge leap from taking over Georgia and the Baltic states, which had no real sovereignty for half a millenium, to an established sovereign nation, and completely different culture, like Korea.

Places like Georgia and Lithuania had their own cultures and were independent medieval states for hundreds of years before being militarily conquered and forced into the Russian empire.

Both states declared independence from the Russian empire when Czarist regime collapsed. Their countries had functioning governmental institutions and armies. They claimed a distinct national and cultural identity that was separate from Russia. They were nation states. After the USSR re-conquered them, there were uprisings from the nationalistic population.

If you’re going to argue that Georgia and the Baltic states “had no real sovereignty”, you might as well throw away the idea of Korean sovereignty. Although it had existed as a kingdom for hundreds of years, in the early 20th century it was a failed state that had serious difficulties maintaining any kind of authority over large areas of its territory. The population no doubt had some sense of common culture and hated the idea of being ruled by foreigners, but it’s hard to see how that alone would have scared off an imperial power like Russia, which had plenty of experience ruling non-Russian people.

You can argue that perhaps incorporating Korea into the Russian empire may have not been worth it from a strategic standpoint, but it is absurd to argue based on the idea that Russia would never annex Korea because the Russian Empire/USSR respected the sovereignty of other nations and did not seek to rule people with different languages and cultures. Russia has an established history of conquering sovereign states and using force and deportations to crush nationalist movements.
Stereo

Max, “why would Russia want to annex Korea?”

Warm port.

Canadian

Before thumbing me down. Not many Koreans are fond of the dictatorship under Park Cheong-hee (South Korean pro-American dictator of Korean descendant who used to be a Imperial Japanese officer). Not many Koreans are fond of the current South Korean president who loves Japan more than South Korea. More likely it’s not because they hate Japanese, they hate the Koreans who used to work for the Japanese that they hate their descendants.

Although most of the anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea today is more about politics than against the innocent Japanese public.

(Chinese-Canadian who used to live in South Korea for work. You may now hate me because of my background. Bash me if you want.)

AHW

I’m glad you spoke up to try to explain how some people *might* see this as fair. No thumbs down from me.

keiko

It was not unusual before the Japanese annexation for Koreans to dig up the grave of political opponents to punish and insult the corpse. Punishing people long after the death is unique to Korea. They would never pardon their political opponents. This attitude and tradition still prevalent makes it difficult for the Noth Korean elite to reconcilate with the South for fear of punishment after the unification.

Canadian

I don’t approve nor disapprove of this action taken by the Korean public.

This isn’t unique. This is common in Russia, China, Vietnam, and some sub-Saharan African countries.

Koreans in general act like this because Korea had been extremely Confucian and conservatively Christian for quite a long time. There is a reason why they act like this if you try to understand Korea.

http://www.squidoo.com/Ryoma-Sakamoto Eric

Whoa, getting biblical on yo @ss–Old Testament style!
lmshea

The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons for seven generation.
Gummysaur

I believe that people who have been wronged deserve closure and in most cases, compensation for their suffering, but punishing descendants of people who are responsible of war crimes and treason or for anything is not fair. That’s like a Tale of Two Cities kind of logic. Of course, it’s not easy at all to forget the terrors of war and the cruelty inflicted upon the Korean people, if we forget, it could easily happen again and that’s not what anyone wants. Forgiving is even harder, people still look down upon Germany. They apologized up and down and deny nothing, but that doesn’t take back what happened, same goes for Japan. But if people keep bringing this up and playing the victim, relations will never get better and that’s what needs to happen.
These descendants, for all we know, are innocent people living normal lives, or maybe they carry their own personal burdens for their ancestor’s actions. If my family were affected by a war, if my parents were murdered by a certain person and I met their descendant, no money could compensate for my loss, money won’t bring them back or make up for what happened. An apology wouldn’t either, but if it were sincere, if they truly regretted their ancestor’s actions, I would feel a lot better knowing that they understand what happened was wrong and that my loss and the losses of others was painful and undeserved and that they were sorry.
But beyond that, punishing innocent people because of what their ancestors did isn’t right. It won’t make everything hunky-dory and people will still complain even after the punishments happen. It’s like a bad injury, if you pick and pick at it because it bothers you so much, it gets infected and you’ll get sick. But leave it alone, and the wound heals faster, and you feel better. The scars remain but that’s how we remember what happened. Everyone suffered enough during the war, why should more suffer in times of peace?

AHW

Further to the point, punishing those who were not involved is a great way to build up resentment and reawaken empathy for the vicimisers and not the victims. “Peeling off old scabs,” as it were, does not contribute to healing, and often makes matters worse.

tenna

In that case Japan should stops whinning about oboohohohoho”horrific effect” the atmomic bomb had upon us. And nuke Japan joke shoulnd’t be offensive against Japanese people. After all, it 65 years ago, all is forgiven (). Why can’t Japanese get over it, but instead whinning every years or so forth with peace and love charade.

From the news article above.

“11 million square metres of land with an estimated value of £112 million”

“And the amounts of land being seized are huge, showing just how much these people did profit from collaborating,”

[168 people] oh God, “poor” people, ever consider that land/property were seized/amassed from other peoples back then, descendant from the rightfully owner/victims should get it back ?

Their ancestor filled their pocket with some higly dubious methods, not even with legal measure. Is not likely that their descendant are now broke (all were listed as high-level businessmen or politician) and force to living outside the street with no foods and clothes, no jobs, no future aspirations.

Germans today are forced to gives back property or asset their ancestor have stolen from Jews, there’s even a laws firm whom specialize into claiming back property/asset for jewish interest group/individual.

If your ancestor was an Nazis/Germans asshole whom stole property and asset from wealthy jews and you sitting all the good stuff right now. Suddenly, one day the descendant from those jews want their ancestor property/asset back. You have any good excuse now ?

Is not PUNISHMENT goddamit (NON WERE THROWN INTO JAIL) legal battle over disputed lands and property are fought all over the world.

Canadian

Reasonable response. But in Korea’s case, there are too many things involved with the US government.
ponta

” Why can’t Japanese get over it, but instead whinning every years or so forth with peace and love charade”

Sorry Japan is not demanding compensation or anything like that.
Basically she is saying the use of atomic bomb has such devastating effects as in Hiroshima that no body should use it.

” And nuke Japan joke shoulnd’t be offensive against Japanese people”

Nuke joke is offensive to anybody including Korean victims.

I don’t give shit about how they punish Korean people who worked with Japanese in those day.

“For Korean historians, the colonial period is both too painful and too saturated with resistance mythologies that cannot find verification in any archive. North Korea has concocted whole tapestries of events that exist only in the hagiography of Kim Il Sung..In the South one particular decade—that between 1935 and 1945—is an empty cupboard:millions of people used and abused by the Japanese cannot get records on what they know to have happened to them ,and thousands of Korean who worked with the Japanese have simply erased that history as if it had never happened. Even lists of officials in local genealogical repositories (country histories, for example) go blank on this period.
(Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings” page 139)

It just looks another attempt to reinforce resistance mythologies.

hoihoi

most korean at that time was pro-Japan.
The ancestor of the South Korean who judges it was a pro-Japanese, too.
it is like witch hunting.
they still live in the past.
jake

apparently, everybody misses on the point on what constitutes punishment here.
Are they putting every descendant into jail? No.

They are redistributing wealth. Every government does this one way or another.
But in this case, i think it’s actually fairer for Korean government to take back what was originally properties of other people (we don’t know who owned it, so i will think they were as the property of commonwealth and give it back to the people whose ancestors did so much to fight to regain independence taken away by Japanese including properties. Besides, in the country according to their law, government commands the final saying in property rights as it goes with many other countries.

So let’s not be so sensitive about what a horrible punishment this is for those poor people~

Stereo

“government commands the final saying in property rights”

I am glad that I am living in a country where property rights are protected by the Constitution.

richardkoshimizu

i am on the fence about this one. japan still holds the largest archive of korean artwork and antiquities, which were looted during the occupation. does this mean that the current japanese generation deserves to keep all of it?
do the germans deserve to keep everything they took during ww2?
as far as i know, in both of these cases, items of cultural significance have been or are in the process of being returned.
whats the difference?

colorful

Just because your father was a murderer, doesn’t mean you’re one too.
Just because your father was a head of state, doesn’t mean you’re one too.
Just because your father was British Royalty, doesn’t mean…oh wait never mind
ponta

“items of cultural significance have been or are in the process of being returned”

Are the items of cultural significance at the British Museum in the process of being returned?
http://aki-akiaki.blogspot.com Aki

“japan still holds the largest archive of korean artwork and antiquities, which were looted during the occupation.”

Could you specify what Korean artwork and antiquities you are talking about? It is true that there are a large collection of Buddhism-related Korean artwork and antiquities in Japan. However, they were brought to Japan by Buddhist monks either in the ancient period or in the medieval period when the Joseon Dynasty made Confucianism a national religion and started to persecute Buddhism. Since the Joseon Dynasty had been persecuting Buddhism from the early 15th century, there were not many Buddhism-related artwork and antiquities remained in Korea when Japan annexed the country in the early 20th century.

Even though the Joseon Dynasty persecuted Buddhism for a long period, there are still some Buddhism-related antiquities in South Korea, some of which are appointed as National Treasures of Korea. Do you know that one of the National Treasures of Korea is a set of 11th-century Buddhist scriptures that was stolen from a Japanese Buddhist temple, Ankoku-ji in Iki (壱岐安国寺), in 1994? Those prints of scriptures were brought from Korea to the Japanese temple in 1488 by a Japanese Buddhist monk, Joen-bou (如円坊), who were worried about the loss of Buddhist treasures under the persecution by the Joseon Dynasty. At that period, many Buddhist treasures in Korea were abandoned just as garbage. Japanese Buddhist monks bought some of them in Korea and brought them to Japan. The Buddhist scriptures that the temple in Japan had been keeping since the 15th century was one such antiquity. However, someone stole it from the temple in 1994 and sold it in Korea. The government of South Korea then appointed it as a National Treasure of Korea in 1995. I do not think that it is very respectable for a government of a modern country to appoint a stolen goods as National Treasure.

Many Buddhist antiquities being kept in Japan have been stolen from many temples in Japan these days. Some robbers were arrested when they tried to sell the antiquities in Korea. The arrested robbers insisted that they just recovered stolen antiquities from Japan.

You wrote that “japan still holds the largest archive of korean artwork and antiquities, which were looted during the occupation.” When you write such a comment, you should specify what antiquities you are talking about, because the collection of Korean artwork and antiquities in Japan is not the one being looted during the annexation.

richardkoshimizu

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,197704,00.html

“From the late 19th century until Japan’s defeat in World War II, Japanese colonial officials and private collectors amassed at least 100,000 artifacts and cultural treasures from all corners of the Korean peninsula. Japanese looters and government-sponsored archaeologists violated the tombs of Korea’s Kings and Queens, plundering finely worked gold jewelry, jade pendants and delicate celadon bowls. They carted off stone carvings, pagodas and priceless reliquary caskets from Buddhist temples and removed tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts from libraries. The choicest booty was often bestowed on the Emperor�like the prized blue celadon ceramics found only in the tombs of the Koryo dynasty nobility around Kaesong (now in North Korea near the border with the South). Ancient pots and spears and the like disappeared into storerooms and collections at Japan’s biggest universities.”

http://aki-akiaki.blogspot.com Aki

Thank you for the link to TIME’s article.

Your handle appears to include Japanese family name. If you read Japanese language, please read the following articles.
—————

(1) Forty years of friendship and the effort for recovering cultural assets (One Korea Daily News, July 14, 2010)

This article is an interview with the president of Kyungnam University in Korea who negotiated with the Yamaguchi Woman’s University that is mentioned in the TIME’s article and succeeded in making the university to return the collection of calligraphy and artwork to South Korea. He told in the interview how it has been deteriorating the relationship between the Korean and the Japanese that the Korean mass media goad on people to anger by insisting that the Japanese looted Korean cultural assets.

(2) Examination of the myth of plunder

Articles in this webpage include close examinations of haw sentences in a Japanese document was modified when it was translated for a Korean-language book to use them as evidences of plunder by the Japanese. The original Japanese document described how Korean people started to rob old burial mounds in order to sell relics to Japanese antique dealers. However, sentences mentioning it were omitted or modified when they were used in the book in Korean language. A large part of the TIME’s article appears to be based on the book.
———-

That TIME’s article mentioned the 18th-century stone tablet that commemorated Korea’s victory over invading Japanese troops in the late 16th century. The article, however, did not explain how the memorial was brought to Japan. Those who read it would think that the memorial was plundered by the Japanese army. However, according to records in Japan, the army general mentioned in the TIME’s article had negotiated with and obtained permission from the owners of the monument. The owners were descendants of the people who built it. The event took place in 1906 that was four years before the Japan’s annexation of Korea, when feelings of Koreans toward the Japanese were not bad. You can read scanned copies of one of the original Japanese documents at the website of Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (reference code: C03026852200, page 3). As probably you know, that memorial was returned to South Korea in 2005 and handed over to North Korea in 2006.

If you visit websites that are dealing in Asian art and antiques, you will find tons of Japanese antiquities as well as Korean ones. I could find even Japanese old tombstones being sold on an English-language website. The drain of Japanese artwork and antiquities mainly took place during two periods, when Japanese people were in poverty. One was during the Meiji Era, when Western imperialists ‘looted’ Japanese cultural assets. The other was occupation period after the WWII. Should Japanese people demand Western countries to ‘return’ those cultural assets that they ‘plundered’ from Japan?

Ido

I never thought I’d see this nowadays! Well even if it’s coming from South Korea, this is really archaic..
Mac

S.Korean gov’t: Your grandfather and grandmother helped the Japanese to maintain colonial control over Korea.”

Persecuted S.Korean citizen: Yeah, so I’ve been told. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do anything about it, being as how I wasn’t even born yet.
Max

The successors aren’t being put in jail. Confiscating inheritance isn’t necessarily an unfair practice. If you’re the child of a drug lord and you inherit his assets, it would be just to confiscate them. I’m not familiar with what each of these people did, but the question’s not as simple as “should people be punished for their ancestors’ crimes”.
tenna

“Go tell that to the millions of non-Russian people in central and Northeast Asia who fell under the domination of the Russian empire. The early USSR may have let Finland go, but they crushed other independence movements. You might want to read up on how the Russians had a way of dealing with the troubling existence of ethnic groups that were seen as a threat”

-

Demographically Russians only constitutes 50 % of the population in Soviet Union. Russia Federation nowadays have many more minorities and “indigenous” groups then Japan with greater autonomy and cultural recognization, ROLF Japan have like 1 group of indigenous people and those people were treated like shit for centuries.

Josef Stalin was a non- Russian (russified), he was an Ossetian. Many prominent figures in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union were ethnically non-Russian. Their ethnic policies was mainly tainted by Stalin’s name (gone apeshit and killed millions of Russian and deporting non- Russian). Given the number of ethnic groups in SU/RF, their policy was gradual intergration (languages, culture), not extermination. Multilingual education were offered extensively during Soviet periode* depsite Russian was the official languages

Deportation largely happened to certain ethnicities which cultimated under WWII in the Caucasus (Before that mostly Poles, Baltic people, Jews). Stalin’s legacy doesn’t equalized Russia/Soviet ethnic policy

-
“Basically she is saying the use of atomic bomb has such devastating effects as in Hiroshima that no body should use it”.
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Yes, Imperial Japan embarked on an epic journey of madness and destruction, leading to one of the deadliest military conflict in the modern history, nobody outside Japan forgot that

-
“Nuke joke is offensive to anybody including Korean victims.”
-

Pot calling the cettle black, Imperial Japan brought them there as labour forces. lol playing the Korean victim card here ?

-
“I don’t give shit about how they punish Korean people who worked with Japanese in those day.”
-

Care to read ? partial size of their property/asset were taken in for investigation. They weren’t arrested and facing prosecution. That “don’t give a shit” attitude maybe is the answer why no one like you Japan in East Asia. Have understanding for our “atomic victims” in the past but we don’t give a shit about your past and try to understand.

-
most korean at that time was pro-Japan
-

Yeah, cool story bro

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Are the items of cultural significance at the British Museum in the process of being returned?
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No, Mesopotamia just now is a warzone, much safer there. Most the artifact were dug out in archelogical expedition, those belonged to long deaded and vanished people/civilization with no sucessor (except Assyrians) so anyone can make a claim. Ancient Greece/Hellenic are Western artifact, no complain.

Meh, Japan and japanese won’t mind trolling PRC/Korea/Dokdo/whale hunt/Okinawa bases issue

When it come to Kuril and Sakhalin, they weep and moans like sissy Johnny boy. August Storm must have left a helluva impression

helical

You had a good troll post going, but the use of more widely refuted factual inaccuracies kind of killed the effect.
Koreans in pre-war and wartime Japan were almost entirely migrant workers and immigrants there of their own volition.
Better luck next time!
ponta

”Yes, Imperial Japan embarked on an epic journey of madness and destruction, leading to one of the deadliest military conflict in the modern history, nobody outside Japan forgot that”

And what does that have to do with fact that the use of atomic bomb has devastating effects?

And by the same token, did Korean people deserve the suffering during the colonization because they were stupid?

” Imperial Japan brought them there as labour forces. lol playing the Korean victim card here ?”

It seems your ultra-nationalism clouded your argument.

“Care to read ?”

Care to read? I said I didn’t care how Korea punished people who worked with the Japanese.

“most korean at that time was pro-Japan
-

Yeah, cool story bro”

At the least, this much is true:In 1943, when Toujou, A criminal , was a prime minister, more than 300000 young men volountarily applied for the Japanese army. In that year, the total population of Korea was about 2500000,

“No, Mesopotamia just now is a warzone, much safer there. Most the artifact were dug out in archelogical expedition, those belonged to long deaded and vanished people/civilization with no sucessor (except Assyrians) so anyone can make a claim. Ancient Greece/Hellenic are Western artifact, no complain.”

So which artifact was richardkoshimizu talking about?

http://billowykimono.blogspot.com/ Senor Science

“Demographically Russians only constitutes 50 % of the population in Soviet Union. Russia Federation nowadays have many more minorities and “indigenous” groups then Japan with greater autonomy and cultural recognization, ROLF Japan have like 1 group of indigenous people and those people were treated like shit for centuries.

Josef Stalin was a non- Russian (russified), he was an Ossetian. Many prominent figures in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union were ethnically non-Russian. Their ethnic policies was mainly tainted by Stalin’s name (gone apeshit and killed millions of Russian and deporting non- Russian). Given the number of ethnic groups in SU/RF, their policy was gradual intergration (languages, culture), not extermination. Multilingual education were offered extensively during Soviet periode* depsite Russian was the official languages”

Funny, this doesn’t explain the Ukranian Holdomor or the illegal annexations of the Baltic states.

“When it come to Kuril and Sakhalin, they weep and moans like sissy Johnny boy. August Storm must have left a helluva impression”

I think I’d be pretty angry too if they were seized illegally.
Piglet

Well I am not in favor of punishing the descendants for their parents faults, but isn’t the situation a little bit different here?
I think the process is similar to the reattribution of stolen jewish property to their rightful owners.
Many of these properties were ill-acquired, so it makes sense at least to contest the legality of the property titles owned by the descendants of the collaborators.
Stereo

Here is a link to Japanese translation of the Korean law.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/WallStreet/9133/sinnitiha.html
第2条（定義）
　2．”親日反民族行為者の財産（以下”親日財産”という。）”とは、親日反民族行為者が国権侵奪が開始された露・日戦争開戦時から1945年8月15日までに日本帝国主義に協力した代価として取得し、又はこれの相続を受けた財産又は親日財産であることを知りながら、遺贈・贈与を受けた財産をいう。この場合、露・日戦争開戦時から1945年8月15日までに親日反民族行為者が取得した財産は、親日行為の代価として取得した財産と推定する。

So, the collaboration assets are the properties of collaborators acquired as consideration for collaboration, and any assets gained by collaborators during 1904-1945 period is assumed to be consideration for collaboration.

第3条（親日財産の国家帰属等）①親日財産（国際協約又は協定等により外国大使館若しくは軍隊が使用・占有又は管理している親日財産及び親日財産中国家が使用し、又は占有又は管理している財産も含む。）は、その取得・贈与等原因行為時にこれを国家の所有とする。ただし、第三者が善意で取得し、又は正当な代価を支払って取得した権利を害することができない。

All the collaboration assets are confiscated by the government.

The situation is different from what commenters here think.
helical

I wouldn’t feel too comfortable hanging around in a country that doesn’t even disallow ex post facto law. Maybe there’s some old Korean law regarding theft of property that can be applied to this situation, and one could argue that they are just trying to uphold the law after a century… but the other actions that are associated with this movement make that claim hardly believable.
Seriously, a book of collaborators? Besides being in poor taste, what good is that going to be except a very handy guide for idle armchair vigilantes and ultra-nationalists to bash and destroy the lives of people today to make themselves feel good?
ele

When will human race be over nationalities and past events… don´t whe share the same fears and desires? why do whe have the need to feel different from one another? do whe feel better this way? do the different cultures whe have promote this?…
I think too much, sorry

Have a nice day.
Moe

This is CRAZY. It’s as if some insane foreign religion has invaded and poisoned the minds of millions of Koreans, making them somehow believe bullshit like ancestral sin.

I mean who would be so crazy to believe that people can be “born” sinners??!! What a crock a shi… wait a minute…
seri-park

That is because the property does not belong to the descendants, as it was illegitimately taken by the ancestors.
seri-park

This is analogous to the case of the descendants of the Nazis that had to return property stolen from the Jews. Likewise, the Japanese museums and citizens should return the approx. 72,000 artifacts stolen during the invasion of Korea, despite the fact that it was the ancestors that stole the goods, not the current Japanese citizens.

South Korea Punishes People For Ancestors’ Crimes

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