Heckleberry comments

SK can't make a double-charge.

They aren't.

The individuals are.

Whether cash-in will soon start, Japanese businesses in SK better leave for good. It's a high-risk country.

Try to base your claims on reality and not sentiment.

SK is a hugely important market for many Japanese businesses. They won't pull out of SK unless somehow their main focus of business shifts away from doing business and making profits. They certainly won't pull out of a decision that costs a Japanese steel business a sum equalling a few employee's annual salaries.

As one example Uniqlo has 180 stores in SK. They have 50 stores in the USA.

History will always be written by the victor and the losers will always be depicted as the antagonists, while the soldiers of the winning side will always be glorified as heroes and those from the losing side will always be seen as war criminals. 

@Toshi - Um.. no.

Japanese and the Germans were the aggressors, regardless of the outcome of war.

Nice try though.

I'm sure many posters will make their usual contribution about how SK victims deserve nothing, but for the record, J-government's position that the 1965 treaty settled all matters regarding compensation for individual victims of forced labour is a recent one, under the direction of Abe.

The former prime minister also criticized the Abe administration's position on the 1965 Japan-Korea Treaty. Tokyo has said the issue of compensation for wartime forced laborers was "settled" through the treaty.

Hatoyama said the 1965 treaty does not preclude individuals from filing private claims, citing a 1991 statement from the director of the Japanese foreign ministry's treaties bureau.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/08/28/Ex-Japanese-prime-minister-calls-for-return-of-South-Korea-to-white-list/4731566992569/

The commonest cause of a person vomiting blood would probably be bleeding from a gastric ulcer, but more serious causes include spontaneous rupture of oesophageal varices from portal venous hypertension secondary to cirrhosis, induced by alcohol, viral hepatitides or cryptogenic cirrhosis.

Is that why he once quit as PM?

I've been there too and the only "justification" as you call it I saw were specific references to British colonization in Asia, including the taking of Hong Kong after the Opium Wars.

@Ossan - Wow, for even you to admit Yasukuni displays certain justifications for their warmongering past, it must be full to the brim with revisionist propaganda.

Why would they worry about being forgotten?

Unlike the stories of 'comfort women' and the forced labourers under the brutal IJA which apparently must no longer dredged up, the A-bomb victims will forever be paraded by Japanese pollies so they can continue to run with the story they were the victims not the aggressors of war.

Pro-Japan posters will always jump to the defense of the grotesque abomination that is Yasukuni, saying there are only a handful of war criminals enshrined there, out of millions.

But they omit the fact that there are in fact more than a thousand war criminals enshrined, of which 14 are class A war criminals.

In all, about 5,700 Japanese were charged in Classes B and C before the international war crimes tribunal in Tokyo. Almost 1,000 were executed. Others were tried and executed by the Communist Chinese and by the Soviet Union. It's these men whose presence at Yasukuni offends Japan's neighbors, including 14 Class A criminals.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-12-26/why-yasukuni-shrine-so-controversial

The downvotes and Anti-Japan flooding. Shows how many Koreans come here. Especially on articles regarding S. Korea.

@"Reason" and "Wisdom" Nippon - That's an astonishing admission of the fact that you think there can only possibly be one correct point of view (i.e. Japanese government's) and anyone whose opinion differs is wrong.

I shake my head at your apparent belief that anyone who doesn't take Japan's side in this debate must only be taking that side because they are Korean. Unbelievable how narrow minded that is.

The forced labor issue is fundamentally a human rights issue.

The individual right to seek compensation has not been extinguished by the Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement.

The ruling is in line with advances in international human rights law that values remedies for individual victims.

@jeancolmar - But what would a Japanese lawyer know? The experts on JT have long declared that the victims deserve nothing.

If SK tries this, they can kiss goodbye to ever seeing any vital materials sourced from Japan for Samsung smartphones and TVs. It will grind their economy to a halt.

@Fighto - In which alternate universe? A year on since Japan made it harder for SK to source materials for semi-conductors, here's what happened:

"Korea Inc. ditches Japan chipmaking materials for homegrown supply"

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Japan-South-Korea-rift/Korea-Inc.-ditches-Japan-chipmaking-materials-for-homegrown-supply

Or if Japan really stooped to the SK level, they can certainly sieze Korean companies assets in Japan. The ball is in Moons court to immediately order the court decision void.

On what legal basis though? Try basing claims and predictions on reality rather than wishful daydreaming.

From 'Abenomics' to 'Abenomask' to 'Abe no mask'.

Would be hilarious if it wasn't such a tragic thing claiming innocent lives.

It's time Japan took a stance on child pornography that is in line with other developed nations.

The softcore child porn in the form of manga widely popular in Japan, or 'Adult Video' featuring young girls who look 15 needs to be banned, as does the explicit underground animated child pornography.

Lift your game and do what most countries did in the 20th century Japan.

In any developed functional country, the residents who were denied entry could sue the government for wrongful denial of their rights to return to their homes, their families and their jobs.

But this is Japan.

Because what damage Japan did to Korea is objectively speaking, absolutely nothing compared to what other nations did to others during WWII. 

@Ossan - typical Japanese right wing rhetoric.

Bet you won't share that view if you were laying strapped on an operating drawing your last breath, after someone just performed a vivisection on you.

All news to you? Look up 'Unit 731' and see if you still want to keep that Rising Sun flag bandanna over your forehead, or that Rising Sun flag in your bedroom wall.

This is gross. Koreans enjoying it. Stay away from them.

@vanities - Why the broad sweeping racist rhetoric?

I quote from the article:

But the statues at Kim's garden also drew criticism among some South Koreans, who described them as tacky or excessively provocative on social media.

Statue in a private garden of some Korean nationalist is not the same as govt commissioned art. What gives Jgovt the right to demand interference about what a private foreign national puts in his garden in another country? Btw.." International courtesy " ..that's a good one Suga, how much international courtesy is Japan showing the hundreds of thousands of "international citizens who reside, work, have families etc in here but have been locked out of coming back in the last few months whilst retuning Japanese face no restrictions...that kind of " international courtesy"?

@marcelto - well said.

But it sure wound up the right wing nationalists like a pull string toy!

So the standard Korean tactic of distracting the masses from the problems at home by directing the attention towards Japan.

@Wesley - A swing and a miss of a comment there.

I think you will find the statue sits in a private garden of a private citizen, commissioned by an individual and sculpted by another individual.

I think you're confusing yourself with some statue the SK government commissioned?

How can babies test positive... something going on here

@Vince

Baby contracts virus through contact with an affected person.

Baby develops symptoms.

Doctor orders test.

Test comes back positive.

South Korea :

10.661 cases - 234 deaths

Japan :

10.686 cases - 230 deaths

corona virus arrived almost at the same time in both countries, sorry I don't see any difference and math is not an opinion, so would you like to explain me where is the "shame" ?

@Cognac - I'll let this graph do the talking:

https://i.postimg.cc/cCc37D2R/1.jpg

Where are the dead people? A month into this and there are no dead people so to speak. So please tell me why is it there are so many apparently untested cases here yet such a miniscule amount of deaths. Please someone explain.

@fa477279 - The beauty of open data is that you don't need to re-create a disaster that happened in another country, to know what is likely to happen in your country (a point that seems to have been missed by the Japanese authorities may I add).

Currently, Japan's confirmed cases of COVID-19 stand at 10,296, with 222 deaths (2.16% mortality).

Nothing to write home about?

Well, on March 3, 2020, Italy had 2,263 cases, with 79 deaths (3.49% mortality).

Italy now has 175,925 cases, with 23,227 deaths (13.2% mortality).

As you can see, the mortality is not a linear function of the number of cases, but dramatically increases when the healthcare system is overloaded with ICU beds full of affected people.

Hope this helps you understand the gravity of the situation.

Wow! South Korea had less than 20. Such a shame Japan couldn't swallow its pride and image of exceptionalism to learn from and work with its closest neighbor about this virus.

@tamanegi - South Korea reported 8 new cases overnight, of which 5 were in strictly quarantined travellers returning from overseas.

It will be interesting to see how quickly Japan overtakes South Korea.

@Pukey2 - Probably in about 48 hours..

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

It seems that South Korean media outlets are much more cooperative with the government, pretending to actually believe the latest numbers it issued. This is generating a sense of calm, with consumer indices much higher than in most other countries. If only the Japanese media were as cooperative, things would be so much better.

@Miles - are you suggesting a conspiracy? If the Korean media outlets are in bed with the SK government in under-reporting COVID-19 cases, why weren't they doing it back in January when SK, along with Italy had the highest number of cases in the world alongside China?

By the way the Japanese media have been more than co-operative with the Japanese government in downplaying COVID-19 cases in Japan. Where have you been the last 2 months?

Japan conducted about 52,000 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests in March, or just 16% of the number carried out in South Korea, according to data from Oxford University.

2.5 times the population, but only 16% of the number of tests when compared to South Korea.

Denials and cover-up the usual modus operandi in Japan.

This is on you Abe.

A few thousand positive cases in Japan, but already a dozen or so high profile cases. Something doesn't add up. Either the virus preferentially targets the famous/public figures, or the true number of positive cases in Japan is a magnitude larger than currently reported. Watch this space...

There should be no reason for such negativity. Japan and Abe have been handling this pandemic better than their counterpart across the sea in Korea and China. 

@Miles - If I replied 'said no one ever', that would be incorrect, as you've just said it.

Have you ever thought that the doctors could be right? If your friend doesn't have a high enough fever it will most likely be the flu.

@Miles - Nope, the influenza tends to cause very high fevers. The Japanese doctor who dismissed the fever has probably already missed a few COVID-19 cases.

It may seem like any sign of illness is COVID 19 but this is the kind of mass hysteria which will only exacerbate a situation which is being handled with the classic calm and rational temperament of the people of Japan.

@Miles - You seem to have a lot of faith in Japan.. what do you know that the rest of us apparently don't?

At the current rate of about 500 new infections a day, it will take about 7 years for the virus to infect just 1% of Japan's population.

@Burning Bush - But how many people are Japan testing? Japan is testing at some of the lowest rates of testing anywhere in the developed world.

Even with the pittance of testing being done, there are 500 cases being picked up daily now. Wasn't that long ago only a few a day were being picked up. So what makes you think the number of cases picked up daily will stay at 500 a day? Countries who are now seeing 2000 DEATHS a day had 5-10 new CASES per day, not that long ago.

March 19, 2020: "The Tokyo 2020 will be held on schedule as planned."

April 7, 2020: Japan declares state of emergency.

Complete and utter ineptitude and denial on show.

Japan needs to close non-essential businesses, ban non-essential travel of their citizens and residents, stop restricting testing but offer it far and wide, identify those affected early, trace their contacts and isolate them.

If not, then Japan will end up like Italy and the US. This seems to be obvious to everybody but the leadership in Japan.

Japanese 'justice' system.

shudder

About South Korea. The country seems to have put the coronavirus in check. Their tests kits for the pandemic are in demand and South Korea is considering which countries to help first. It may well be Japan will be asking South Korea for help. This is from today's "Korean Herald":

@jeancolmar - the fact that SK's policy to test/identify/quarantine is being lauded by many countries as a model to follow does not sit well with Japan. The downvotes on your comment are telling.