Over the course of nearly a decade I have heard from various pen-pals, friends, random people I meet, and of course news articles, about the horrors of war, the occupation of Korea, and comfort women who were 'still waiting for Japan to apologize to them' (and seen photos of survivors literally wailing in the streets refusing to rest until they get an apology).
After confronting a friend who knows far more about Japan then I do, I asked why - as Koreans have stated so many times - has Japan not said sorry?
My friend replied that they had done so and multiple times at that. Yet I was surprised. Why hadn't I heard about it then? Why were the Koreans so sure that Japan had not done so?
Purely by accident I found a list of the times Japan has apologized to various groups about previous wars.
Here is a brief list of each public apology that was aimed in some way at Korea:
22 June 1965 - Korea
24 August 1982 - Asia
26 August 1982 - Korea
6 September 1984 - Korean President (Chun Doo Hwan)
23 October 1985 - UN
1989 (exact date unknown) - Korea
18 April 1990 - Koreans
24 May 1990 - Korean President (Roh Tae-woo)
25 May 1990 - Korean President
1 January 1992 - Korean comfort women
16 January 1992 - Korean President
17 January 1992 - Korean + comfort women
6 July 1992 - comfort women
4 August 1993 - comfort women
31 August 1994 - comfort women
9 June 1995 - Asia
July 1995 - comfort women
15 August 1995 - Asia
23 June 1996 - Korean President (Kim Young Sam)+ comfort women
8 October 1996 - Korean President (Kim Dae Jung)
28 August 1997 - Asia
16 January 1998 - universal
15 July 1998 - comfort women
8 October 1998 - Korea
August 10, 2000 - Asia
August 17, 2000 - Asia
April 3, 2001 - Asia
September 8, 2001 - many countries
October 15, 2001 - Korean President
2001 (exact date unknown) - comfort women
September 17, 2002 - North Korea
August 15, 2003 - Asia
April 22, 2005 - universal
August 15, 2005 - Asia
March 26, 2007 - comfort women
You would think that 35 recorded apologies from over 4 decades, including multiple times directly to four Korean presidents, and even to North Korea would have, at some time, have actually been reported within Korea. Which to be fair it probably had been but the masses still don't believe it ever happened.
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3 comments:
why not look up how many times a japanese pm has gone to yasukuni to pay homage to class a war criminals? their apologies mean nothing.
One of my recent comments pawikirogii removed from his blog mentions as follows:
Most of pawi's comments at The Marmot Hole are evaluated as negative(The Marmot's blog incorporates a rating system on each reader's comment and pawi is a frequent commenter.). Which one of the following explains his negative ratings.
1. pawi is stupid.
2. The readers rating pawi's comments are stupid.
3. Pawi is a genious. Nobody can understand him.
If Pawi thinks neither one of the above is correct, he is ''Tensai Bakabon''(Fool the Genious), the most famous Japanese comic character.
Hey, pawi, Koreans are oblivious when it comes to the atrocities they themselves committed. How many times Koreans apologized to the Vietnamese?
@ pawi
And other countries are better how?
Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense, sad that the fire bombings against Japan in WWII would have counted as war crimes except the US had won the war. Watch the 2003 documentary called "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara".
“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children,” Mr. McNamara recalled; some 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all. “LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals.”
“What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” he asked.
Japan has admitted the past. True, they don't teach it much to their own people and that I don't like. But what I more dislike is when Koreans simply refuse to acknowledge history and instead beat their breast and cry fowl.
Korean has grown a lot in terms in discrimination, but the country itself still is very racist and sexist. As Korea becomes more of a world economic power but behalves immaturely, how can they be taken seriously?
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