hankyoreh

Japanese gather in a counter-protest against an anti-Korean demonstration by far right groups in Tokyo in 2014. (Yonhap News)

On July 2, a Japanese court ordered Fuji Corporation, a Japanese real estate firm, to pay 1.1 million yen (US$10,251) to a third-generation Korean-Japanese employee for emotional damages. For a long time, Fuji Corporation had been giving its employees ostensibly educational documents that expressed violent anti-Korean sentiments.

The decision reached by Osaka District Court details how Fuji Corporation insulted Koreans as “liars” and “a people who make up history,” distorted history by claiming that “the comfort women lived lives of luxury,” and even said that “Zainichi [ethnic Koreans in Japan] should die” in documents that it distributed to its employees for two and a half years.

The company even made its employees write “reviews” of the documents it distributed. But rather than making an apology, the managers at Fuji Corporation have promised to appeal the court’s decision on the grounds of the “freedom of thought” in a despicable illustration of their shamelessness.

When South Korea and Japan’s conflict over Japan’s export controls was intensifying last year, Japanese cosmetics firm DHC produced online videos that were derogatory to Koreans, making the ludicrous claim that modern hangul, as the Korean writing system is known, was compiled by the Japanese. Well-known Japanese hotel chain APA also stirred up controversy by stocking books that deny the Rape of Nanjing and the sexual servitude of the comfort women.

This prompts concerns that the retrogressive behavior of the far-right groups is infiltrating Japanese society. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe deserves much of the blame for instigating anti-Korean sentiment through his portrayal of South Korea as a lying country after the South Korean Supreme Court ruled that the victims of forced labor during the Japanese occupation should be paid damages. The Abe administration needs to immediately stop exploiting anti-Korean sentiment for political ends.

Most importantly of all, the citizens of South Korea and Japan need to stand up to far-right forces in both countries that refuse to express remorse for Japan’s imperial past and wars of aggression and that seek to cover up those historical facts with hatred of Koreans. The anti-Korean behavior at Fuji Corporation was brought to light through a stubborn legal battle fought for five years by a female employee at the company, a third-generation Korean-Japanese. We take some hope from this woman’s words: “I didn’t want my children to inherit a future in which we submit in silence to hatred and prejudice.”

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]