[KS] Re: Japanese Colonization Period

Rupert Atkinson rupert at www.cuk.ac.kr
Mon Sep 4 21:27:13 EDT 2000


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A Malaysian friend of mine told me that he hated the Japanese and
Koreans alike for what they did during WWII.  I was quite srprised.
When I asked him why he told me that while many of the prison camps were
run by Japanese, many of the guards were Korean.  He added that,
although the Japanese were cruel, they were predictable in thier
violence, whereeas the Korean guards were both cruel and unpredictable
thus generating a lot of fear.

I also have, somewhere, a report (must dif it up) that shows some 240 or
so Koreans were indicted for war crimes, some of whom were executed.
While collaborators in the South seem to have gotten away with it, I
wonder what happened to those in the North....

Rupert Atkinson

=========================
Henny Savinije wrote:

Often when I get into a discussion like this with Koreans, I ask them if

they knew that in the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia and Holland (Former

colonist interned in Indonesia) do hate the Koreans more than the
Japanese?
Then there is a silence, and the question: "Why?" I tell them that the
Koreans serving for the Japanese were crueler than the Japanese
themselves.
Then the issue about Comfort girls comes up, well did you know that
(Taiwanese, Philippino and) Dutch women served as comfort girls as well,
no
they don't. Then the question comes up if they were compensated, no they

weren't either. The problem was that the women could be divided into
three
categories: the ones who wanted it, the ones who didn't want it, but did
it
in order to survive, and finally the ones who didn't want it. Since it
was
almost impossible to decide who belonged to which group, the whole
things
was never settled. Although I understood there have been negotiations
between the Dutch government and Japan.






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