South Korea Has No Chill
Categories: News
Time….doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds. South Korea is still pretty pissed off over how the Japanese treated them during colonial rule. So pissed in fact that they want to put stickers on products going to Korean school that made by companies that were around during the colonial ruling times (Mitsubishi, Toshiba, etc). What do the stickers say? Well…
“made by a Japanese firm responsible for war crimes” or “war crime company”
No chill. Zero. Zip. Nada. They had chill once, but they lost it in a boating accident (we’re not actually certain of the veracity of this claim).
There are opponents to the proposal who are calling the idea “outmoded nationalism” and we’re kind of inclined to agree. Like, dudes…Korea…we dropped two nukes on Japan and they’re totally cool and love us now. Yeah, they committed some war crimes, and they paid for it in 1965 via the “Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea”. Despite how much we admire the pettiness of South Korea in this endeavor, it’s really pretty damn childish considering that we literally vaporized two cities and Japan is totes cool with us.
Obviously, world history teaches us that the two countries have not been gigantic fans of each other for quite some time. There is a laundry list miles long that details how much the nations are not fans of each other. But…it’s 2019 and we like to pretend that everyone has simmered down since that whole World War 2 deal. We haven’t, but we like to pretend. Proponents of the sticker may defend the proposal by saying something to the effect of “knowing your history,” but the truth is you can teach the history without a petty sticker on school equipment.
Anyways, while this level of pettiness it is entertaining, to say the least, we’re pretty sure that the resolution won’t pass…if it does…it’ll still be pretty damn funny…but we doubt it will pass.
I spent 13 months in the Korean DMZ(Jun ’72-Jul ’73). I was stationed at Camp Kitty Hawk(now Camp Bonifas). I knew the South Koreans hated the North Koreans, but was not aware of their animosity towards Japan.
There is still a hatred towards Japanese. Imperial Japanese enslaved Korean men and forced Korean women into sex slavery. Some were subject to human experiments. Land property was confiscated. Koreans forced to speak Japanese and change their names to Japanese names. 70k Koreans were killed in thenuclear bomb blasts. These are examples of what is known, records were destroyed by the Japanese. Japan doesn’t admit to any of these crimes. A quick Google search would have given you the reason Koreans hate Japanese.
Joseon, we added a caveat that there is a laundry list of offenses that have lead to the disdain between the countries.
Korean-american combat infantry vet here. Just to give you a little insight…when the Fukushima nuclear disaster happened, most older generations (ie. my grandparents) secretly celebrated at the dinner table, just like how some Muslim countries celebrated 9/11. My mom, however, visits Japan frequently, she loves the culture and people… but at the same time, she has emphasized how important it is for me to KNOW THE HISTORY and NEVER FORGET. The Japanese government has yet to apologize to Korea.
I personally do not have an ounce of hatred toward Japan only because I grew up in ‘merica.