[KS] Re: Japanese Colonization Period

[Dr. John Caruso Jr.]

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Thanks Frank, I will go back and review the archives.  While murder for
murder might not be a deterrent to individual murders, the murder of a mass
murderer like Hirohito and the reduction of the royal family to the status
of the Romanovs would have been a just verdict after WWII.

The Allies, 60 years later, still hunt down and prosecute Nazi war criminals
and collaborators and victims collect new judgments for reparations from
German companies and Swiss banks yet mass murder by Imperial Japan doesn't
even qualify for a national atonement.  Who wants to defend that double
standard?

I guess the victims have to suffice knowing that under the code of Bushido
the Japanese lost face and isn't that enough humiliation to suffer?  After
all their Co-Prosperity Sphere was just the forerunner of
globalization -perhaps everyone in Asia owes them a debt of gratitude for
modernization rather than recalling the invasions and brutal occupations.

 The Japanese joined the Axis in 1936 and were made honorary Aryans, a
status they were granted again by South Africa during apartheid.  Like the
Nazis they had to invent and propagate a myth of racial purity and
superiority and the Koreans by geographic propinquity became the victims of
annexation.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Hoffmann" <hoffmann at fas.harvard.edu>
To: <korean-studies at iic.edu>
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 7:53 PM
Subject: Re: Japanese Colonization Period


> REPLY sends your message to the whole list
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>
> >
> >The hundreds of years fell between Hideyoshi and the late 1880's and
> >culminated in annexation of Korea in 1910.  Long range perspective of
> >Japanese shoguns and other warring clans plus pirates.
>
> We have discussed that a year ago on this list, haven't we? (You may
> not have been on the list then, but you can read it in the archives.)
> There are no historical sources that would prove your above statement
> to be valid. There sure was no master plan for the occupation of
> Korea, not until very late into the 19th century, and using the term
> "culmination" if referring to the centuries between the Hideyoshi
> Invasions and 1910 also builds upon the idea of linear historical
> developments, but that seems too much of a short cut to describe this
> period (and we have just discussed that a month ago). Also, this is
> not what Korean historians write -- maybe the press, from time to
> time.
>
> >Were Chun Doo Hwan and Kim Jong IL aligned with the Japanese during their
> >occupation?
>
> Not too funny -- but okay ... you know I was talking about murder as
> a solution for murder.
>
> Frank
> --
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