Two-faced neighbor

New Japanese textbooks ruin their children’s future

Japan’s historical whitewashing reached a new low Friday when Tokyo expanded their targets of distorted education to include elementary schoolchildren.

According to a revision added to their history books, Dokdo is Japanese sovereign territory unlawfully occupied by Korea. This is a glaring aggravation from previous books, which merely state that there are territorial disputes over the rocky islets between Korea and Japan, or show territorial lines that include them.

Japan’s education minister said, “It is natural that we ‘correctly’ teach our territory.” But young Japanese students will think of two things when they read new textbooks: Korea is a villainous country, and they must retake the volcanic outcroppings by force if needed. Both thoughts are “never” correct, and very dangerous.

In a way, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other Japanese leaders most of who were born after the end of World War II, could be the victims of such wrongful education, too, trained to glorify the invasion of neighbors and justify wartime misdeeds. Otherwise, former Asian victims of Imperial Japan cannot understand how the Japanese leaders can continue to provoke their neighbors while calling for mending times at the same time.

Tokyo’s move came just days after Premier Abe expressed his dire wish to improve bilateral ties with Seoul to President Park Geun-hye as U.S. President Barack Obama looked on, in the Netherlands. Koreans are feeling angry and have a sense of betrayal about the two-faced Japanese leader and his government, but the Japanese say they delayed the release of the controversial new textbooks in “consideration” of Korea and the three-way summit. The U.S. might as well give up trying to bring reconciliation between its two Asian allies for a while.

Whether it is due to inaccurate education or the notorious two-facedness of the Japanese nation, one thing is certain: Seoul cannot effectively deal with Tokyo’s carefully planned provocations only with increasingly shrill denunciations. Nor should the Korean government be involved in its Japanese counterpart’s pace to make it an international dispute. Seoul has only to rebuke Tokyo’s provocation, snub any challenges from the latter, and take additional steps to enhance its effective administration of the islets.

Seoul should be ready to join hands with anyone, including conscientious Japanese people, who are sympathetic to former victims of imperial Japan. Former President Lee Myung-bak’s abrupt visit to Dokdo in August 2012, though fully justifiable in itself, left two stinging lessons in this regard. First, his act was a one-time outburst of emotion without any follow-up steps, confirming popular suspicions about his political motivation. Second, the former leader criticized Japanese Emperor Akihito, unnecessarily enraging most Japanese people and possibly alienating Japan’s spiritual leader, who has shown sympathy to Korea.

The government also needs to tell Washington how the Japanese move would undermine President Obama’s pivot to Asia strategy and hurt U.S. interests in this region. And the fact that the U.S. has to rectify a strategic mistake made six decades ago for the sake of international justice, and peace.

Korea must turn the bilateral battle into one between Japanese nationalists and the rest of the world. The nation has justifiable causes in historical and humanistic terms. What Seoul does not seem to have are determination and tenacity.