Japan asks S Korean parliament speaker retract emperor comments

In February, Moon drew a backlash from Japan for saying an apology from then Emperor Akihito would resolve a long-standing dispute over the issue of so-called comfort women.

"It only takes one word from the prime minister, who represents Japan -- I wish the emperor would do it since he will step down soon,"

What a joke.

After multiple apologies and compensation in regards to comfort women (and none which were retracted despite what the naysayers out there say), the last one from 2015 which was scrapped without warning by the unhinged president Moon, why would anyone with an ounce of cerebral matter believe what this assembly speaker says. One word? Is he kidding me?

As we have seen it doesn't matter how many times Japan apologizes, it will never be good enough. There will always be something else. Even if Akihito had apologized, the anti-Japan crowd will still spout off that it's not enough, Japan 'never' apologized, etc.

Grow up!

Forced apologies are also not actual apologies. Also, South Korea has a sad history of not remembering past apologies and also rejecting them over semantics.

The whole comfort woman issue in Korea is complicated. Korea cannot ever admit that many Koreans were equally complicit in the whole sad affair. They acted as recruiters and procurers. This taints the simplistic black and white narrative the Korean government has been peddling for decades.

Korean anti-Japanese education is really terrible. Unfortunately, the honor student gets the wrong historical perception.

Well since SK doesn't want him going over their, he can fax it over...

What a surprise, South Korea is doing its usual stuff. It does not matter how many times or how sincerely Japan apologizes, it does not matter how much money Japan pays, SK will always say "not enough". Just ignore them, they are hopeless. Contact with them as less as possible.

Since Moon Hee Sang has already sent Japan a letter of apology for his utterly ridiculous statement, there is no reason to refuse to retract it. Claiming that Emp Akihito is a "son of a war criminal" is wrong, because his father Emp Hirohito was never charged much less convicted as a war criminal by the post WWII International Tribunal for the Far East. Akihito was 12 years old when WWII ended. His words are simply hate mongering, rude and offensive. Emp Akihito spent his entire reign basically "making up" for the harm Japan brought upon other nations during his father's reign, and even most Japan-hating Koreans with any education left this man out of it. Not so with Moon Hee Sang. J-haters are quick to point out Japanese politicians who make statements as individuals and interpret that as the position of the entire Japanese government. Should we not then consider the comments made by Moon Hee Sang as representing the position of the entire South Korean government?

@Norman Goodman

Nobody doubts German sincerity. Japanese sincerity over this is obviously non-existent. Insincere apologies are garbage.

Lots of people doubt German sincerity including Greeks, Polish, and Russians. My British friends are quick to point out that Germany never apologized to the European countries it invaded and it paid virtually nothing in reparations.

Moreover, the rise of the AfD (Alternative for German) is making many people within and without Germany very nervous. The AfD makes the Nippon Kaigi look left wing.

@Chip Star

Japan simply does not understand how to take responsibility for its actions. An apology is ineffective if you turn around and immediately continue to deny anything happened.

"Japan" is not a homgenous blob where everyone thinks the same. No apologies have been repudiated. There are deniers, but that is because we have freedom of speech in Japan unlike China and North Korea.

Treating "Japan" as a homogenous blob is racist. We have right-wingers, left-wingers, middle-of-the-roaders. There is no one "Japanese voice" on anything.

Generalizing about "Japan" or "the Japanese" is the same as generalizing about "gaijin" - it is racist.

quercetumToday  10:37 am JST

Japan doesn’t get along with South Korea, doesn’t know why it can’t get along, or how to get along. That’s the bottom line.

No, you have that backwards. The adoption of a revisionist history since the establishment of the ROK has made placing blame for every role "Korea" played in WWII on Japan alone. Japan has atoned for it's past. It is South Korea which has not because it is in denial of it's past.

"Hong was prosecuted by the United States as a Class B war criminal, and was the highest-ranking Korean officer to be executed for war crimes in the postwar period."

http://www.executedtoday.com/2017/09/26/1946-hong-sa-ik-a-korean-general-in-the-japanese-army/

South Korea is incapable of getting along with Japan, after having received all it needed in the 1960s, because anti-Japan sentiment has been ingrained into South Korean society and school education.

South Korean high school students protest teachers forcing ‘anti-Japan’ acts

"Public high school teachers in Seoul forced students to engage in “anti-Japan” acts, such as holding posters that say “Japan must apologize” at a school marathon event, two of the school’s students said at a press conference they held to protest the teachers’ behavior.

The teachers belong to the Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union, which supports the administration of President Moon Jae-in. Local newspapers are criticizing the teachers’ behavior, with the JoongAng Ilbo daily calling it “politically biased” education."

https://asianews.network/2019/10/28/south-korean-high-school-students-protest-teachers-forcing-anti-japan-acts/

Japan just be hold onto the international treaty of 1965 clause for a year or two SK will b part of China n Japan shouldn't have helped SK in the first place. 2. Anything to do with SK from now on should be done with a third party involved 3. Not a single Yen for SK

The majority of comfort women who are still alive supported the 2015 deal!

If Japan took the actions of recognizing the sex slaves and forced laborers, showed respect to those people and their memorials, distributed textbooks which clearly illustrated Japan's war crimes, and politicians stopped going to Yasukuni or showing any respect to Japan's war criminals, then Japan would be on the same footing as Germany and the apologies of mere words would no longer be asked for. Again, actions speak louder than words. They always have.

Like fake history instilled into SK kids?

Forget it.

I believe SKeans are finding out with the new book that hit best seller this year.

The same thing with comfort women. It was the Imperial Japanese Army that ordered the recruitment of comfort women by any means, and was the sole benefactor of the comfort women, therefore Japan alone is liable for the atrocity of the forced conscription of the comfort women across Asia.

Except that their was no such order when it comes to women in the Korean peninsula. Nada. Zero.

Therefore, as always, a comparison to Auschwitz and Holocaust is simply lame.

What forced labour n sex slaves when they were paid at that time n SK govt pocketing the compensation money themselves and asking for more of both with every new elected presidend speaks more louder than action. N without japan SK wouldn't be existing it would a province of China n will b suffering uyghur rite now as joeson

The majority of comfort women who are still alive supported the 2015 deal!

And those who didn't are all hostages of Chong Dae Hyup who flipped their testimonies one way or the other altogether in early 1990s and there's absolutely none who had actually done so-called the fact checking.

We should feel sad for the ones who cannot let go of their anger. They will die with such anger as pitiful and vengeful old men and women.

Japan is improving relations will many nations including China. The backwards Korean mentality which is focused and frozen in time in 1900s will never change with appeasement.

We have better relations with China and we never apologized as much or paid compensation as we did with Korea, yet China is getting closer to Japan, friendlier ties and relationship than a country called half S. Korea.

See? Koreans basically treating their own CW after the war as all professional prostitutes. There's basically no difference in nature between CW for IJA and their own CW.

As far as Korean CW issue is concerned, forget it, it is just meaningless to repeat the same arguments unless we could refer to CW system in SK after 1945 and beyond. But mods rule would delete them as off-topic or bunch of anti-Japan hypocrites would reject them as whataboutism.

Just Look and imagine how ridiculous SK government and justice, those brainwashed sheeple, and bunch of cult groups like Chong Dae Hyup don't even care about what those sex slaves for US/UN soldiers are doing these days..

N no imperial armies or armies in japan now case closed respect the treaty of 1965 that's it.

Why the Emperor of Japan? The Showa Emperor passed away many years ago and in any case he had nothing to do with it, the person who started the "comfort women" system was Yasuhiro Nakasone, ex-PM and still, at 101 years old a member of the Japanese diet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/comfort-women-and-japans-war-on-truth.html

Yep, I'm sure that'll work. More signalling to the collective that he is being strong. More about his own show of strength than any real attempt to effectively engage the issue. Nothing new here. Demanding an apology for demanding an apology. Pros at work folks... back to the sandpit boys. The he-said she-said method.

My British friends are quick to point out that Germany never apologized to the European countries it invaded and it paid virtually nothing in reparations.

Germany paid several nations with territory and forced labor. I don't think the British go anything though.

You have to understand though, that I did not claim Germany apologized. I said no one doubts German sincerity. That is because the actions of Germany speaks louder than any words could. If there is any mass obfuscation among Germans regarding WWII it must be recent. In Japan on the other hand the textbooks are whitewashed, the public is generally ignorant of the war, and the government is generally in a state of denial often talking out both sides of its mouth on the issue. The government/courts blocking attempts by forced laborers to get compensation from private companies is an action which really smacks of insincerity.

My stance has always been that Japan does not need to apologize, partly because modern Japan simply cannot apologize on behalf of guilty people of the past who are now mostly dead. Actions speak louder than words and Japanese actions regarding its history are simply horrible. If Japan took the actions of recognizing the sex slaves and forced laborers, showed respect to those people and their memorials, distributed textbooks which clearly illustrated Japan's war crimes, and politicians stopped going to Yasukuni or showing any respect to Japan's war criminals, then Japan would be on the same footing as Germany and the apologies of mere words would no longer be asked for. Again, actions speak louder than words. They always have.

Eppee: I believe they do. You can see them on the American Internet whenever the subject of South Korea comes up. They are probably in other countries too. Wonder if they get paid.

I am wondering if Japan has the equivalent of Chinese web propagandists ....

I have often wondered why the Emperor did not formally apologize for these atrocities, and some memorial from Japan put in Korea..then at least a precedent would of been established they could point to, to remedy this once and for all

This guy looks like a crazed right winger..

@oldman_13

Even if Akihito had apologized, the anti-Japan crowd will still spout off that it's not enough, Japan 'never' apologized, etc.

The emperor's apology is aimed at Japan's own rightwing population, not at Koreans. Since the emperor apologized to comfort women, Japan's rightwingers who worship the emperor like a God cannot contradict his statement, that the Japanese state wronged these women and owes them an apology. 

This is why Abe san fiercely opposed Emperor Akihito's attempt to travel to Korea and apologize to comfort women in person during the last days of his reign. 

Grow up!

It is Japan that needs to grow up.

@Attilathehungry

The whole comfort woman issue in Korea is complicated.

It's not.

Korea cannot ever admit that many Koreans were equally complicit in the whole sad affair.

I will give you an example so that you can understand. The Auschwitz death camp is in Poland, not in Germany, and many Poles were involved in rounding up and shipping Jews to the Auschwitz. So does that mean the Poles are as guilty as Germans in the atrocity of the Holocaust and the Auschwitz? Absolutely not, Germany alone is solely responsible for the establishment and running of the Auschwitz, because it was Adolf Hitler himself who ordered the establishment and operation of the Auschwitz death camp.

The same thing with comfort women. It was the Imperial Japanese Army that ordered the recruitment of comfort women by any means, and was the sole benefactor of the comfort women, therefore Japan alone is liable for the atrocity of the forced conscription of the comfort women across Asia.

At the moment, it is Korea and China alone that are speaking out against Japan on comfort women issue because only they are strong enough to stand up to Japan, but they soon will be joined by others, namely Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, etc.

@ JuminRhee

We should feel sad for the ones who cannot let go of their anger. They will die with such anger as pitiful and vengeful old men and women.

A terrible Japanese infection. Just toxic !

Claiming that Emp Akihito is a "son of a war criminal" is wrong, because his father Emp Hirohito was never charged much less convicted as a war criminal by the post WWII International Tribunal for the Far East.

Would you grant Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731, the same latitude? He was not prosecuted for war crimes either and for basically the same reason....he was deemed to be "useful". Justice was not served.

Akihito was 12 years old when WWII ended.

That is what really matters right there. No son should in any way be held liable for the actions of his father. To shame a man for his father's history is pure rubbish.

Like fake history instilled into SK kids?

Absolutely not. Both sides need to discover the truth. I never absolved either side. Both countries' politicians have a ton of garbage for baggage. They both need to grow the hell up and stop telling lies about history. Anybody with any brains at all who has examined this issue honestly knows both sides are pretty full of it. And it seems both sides are mostly speaking from a desire to score points with their domestic audience and keep this all going for the sake of doing so rather than arrive at any sort of solution and move on.

But hey....politicians are generally scum so there you go.

Japan doesn’t get along with South Korea, doesn’t know why it can’t get along, or how to get along. That’s the bottom line.

No retraction is possible, because what Moon said was the official Korean governmental suggestion to Japan.

That the emperor should apologize to comfort women in person. This way Abe san cannot overrule the actions of emperor and deny the Japanese state's responsibility.

This is indeed what Emperor Akihito offered to do, but he was prevented from making the trip by Abe san who approves Emperor's overseas trips.

the last one from 2015 which was scrapped without warning by the unhinged president Moon

It took me some time to figure out what the heck you were trying to say. The South Korean side scrapped a deal for an apology, not an apology. And it was not because of Moon but because 75 percent of the South Korean people were against it. And it seems they were against it because part of the deal meant removal of some Busan statues.

How can an apology that comes by way of a deal in which the history is removed so as to be forgotten be considered a legitimate apology? If the Japanese side is going to admit it forced South Korean women to be sex slaves, the South Korean response simply cannot be to turn their back on those sex slaves. If we agree there were sex slaves those slaves need to be remembered along with their histories and commemorating them is legitimate. If the Japanese side was truly apologizing it would welcome the statues, not insist they be removed.

You won't find the Germans pressing other nations to expunge WWII history which is why the Germans are not being constantly attacked over it. Nobody doubts German sincerity. Japanese sincerity over this is obviously non-existent. Insincere apologies are garbage.

Japan simply does not understand how to take responsibility for its actions. An apology is ineffective if you turn around and immediately continue to deny anything happened.

exactly! well said chip!

Japan simply does not understand how to take responsibility for its actions. An apology is ineffective if you turn around and immediately continue to deny anything happened.