SJ comments

Both talk to their domestic audience, not each other.

It was good, but the Americans playing the VIPs were hideously bad actors with laughably stilted dialogue.

It has been the same for the Asians appearing in Hollywood movies.

Japan is like China in regarding cinema as a national propaganda tool. S. Korea was once the same under the military regimes before 1988. This is the same for freedom of the press.

Governmental interventions always curb the creativity of movie makers. Now the Korean government supports developing the infrastructure of the art and entertainment industry, but never intervenes in the contents. An exception was the black list of artists compiled by the former, mindless president Park who was later impeached.

It is not surprising that Hirokazu Kore-eda went to Korea where he was welcomed.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2021/07/689_295078.html

The governmental "Cool Japan" strategy will eventually undermine the image of the country. Being honest is always a virtue in movie-making.

Some Japanese say the show, Squid game, is a rip-off of many Original Japanese films, which are also copies of others and so on. The big difference is that those death-game films focus on games, but Squid Games explores human nature. It bluntly exposes every dirty side of contemporary Korean society to the world.

A Japanese critic summarized it well as follows: https://realsound.jp/movie/2021/10/post-878490_2.html

目指すものは、あくまで社会の歪んだ姿を明らかにすることであり、そこで生きる人間の存在を描くことだ。

Under the current regime, Japan never can produce global megahit films like Squid Game. Korean filmmakers do not hesitate to expose any ugly aspect of Korean society, but the Japanese can not. For example, no Japanese politician welcomed the 2018  Palme d'Or-awarded film during Cannes, Shoplifters (万引き家族) by Hirokazu Kore-eda, because they do not like showing the darker side of their society. They fear facing the truth.

@BackpackingNepal Oct. 10  03:26 pm JST

And these are the Originals, All Japanese.

(2000) Battle Royale

(2007) Kaiji

(2014) As the Gods Will

(2020) Alice in Borderland

@kennyG

It's not a secret the director of the work officially stated, the motif(s) are based on Japanese Manga/movies as he’s been a big fan of those.

Kaiji.

Battle Royal

Liars Game

20 century boy

and more...

Have you ever watched any episode of Squid Game?

Those are all about games, but Squid Game is about humans.

More surprising is this still can be a news headline. Everybody already knows it.

Everybody is talking about it, and I binged to grasp what the fuss is about.

Just one comment. The show is far closer to reality in S. Korea than you surmise. Massacres and fratricidal killings were widespread, especially just before and during the Korean war. Here I still can see traces of old villages deserted by massacres more than 70 years ago.

Coincidentally, I subscribed it today. But I am unfamiliar to it.

More surprising is that North Korean missile tests still become a headline in Japanese media.

@ Kazuaki Shimazaki @kennyG

All the crap about forced labor and comfort women only surfaced in the 80s onwards.

I am wondering whether you can explain why Japanese Mitsbish apologized to the US, but not to Korea as mentioned in the following news footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLdr4imdXwI&t=529s

Readers' comments in Yahoo! Japan are amazingly homogeneous and chauvinistic on the same article. They seem to have been well indoctrinated by the revisionists and Japanese government: https://news.yahoo.co.jp/pickup/6399454

I think the Japanese government has better withdraw the UNESCO site rather than go against those massive and patriotic Japanese. The current S. Korean government seldom defies the people.

More info and testimony from the Korean side:

https://youtu.be/cCH6VdyuxGU

https://youtu.be/GLdr4imdXwI

It is the same for the peace parks and museums in Japan that memorize the victims of atomic bombs excluding Korean victims.

@Yohan

I think he is now very disappointed. The beginning for dialog between North and South was so promising, but now after a few years he has to admit the result of all he tried is zero. Nothing at all.

People tend to forget the past so easily.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/09/north-korea-us-airbase-guam-trump-fire-fury

@ReasonandWisdomNippon

Acknowledge the 1965 aggrement and tell your Supreme Court to respect and abide by that agreement.

Interesting. Do most Japanese people believe this kind of interference by the government in the Japanese judiciary system is possible?

For reference, in S. Korea, the former president is in jail for doing it.

@HakmanJuly

What's the current death rate?

The 7-day moving average is 3 per day, which is lower than the suicide rate, 38 per day, by a factor of 10.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2019/11/202_276205.html

The good news is that the death rate from the covid-19 in S. Korea is lower compared with the previous outbreaks because most vulnerable and aged people are now vaccinated at least once. The nationwide daily death rate once peaked at 40 last year, but it has been less than 5 during the past month: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/

@GdTokyo

Since then, the war has ended, S. Korea and Japan signed a peace treaty in which Japan paid reparations and Korea said that all issues were forever and finally settled,

Peace treaty? This is what the Japanese history textbooks taught you?

The fact is that Japan has never admitted any wrongdoing in Korea during the WWII. This means that Japan has never paid reparations. If they ever gave some money to the Korean government, then it should have been just for free or congratulation.

@oldman_13

Contrary to those who still falsely accuse the Japanese government of not coming to terms with its past (and showing zero proof of this outside of a few boneheaded statements and acts by individual politicians), the government of Japan has given numerous official apologies to South Korea for its past atrocities. This includes TWO official apology and compensation given to the comfort women, both undermined by ignorant anti-Japan nationalists in South Korea.

Apologize and then make "Masakaki" Ritual Offering at Yasukuni Shrine?

https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2021042100335/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine

https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/the-abe-statement-did-abe-apologize/

This is a Japanese way of apologizing?

@Sindhoor GK

The economy is out of the topic. The ultimate cause of Japanese distortion and denial of history and identity can be found in Nara, which Professor Murph did not pinpoint in his book.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2003/07/06/general/buried-treasure-the-mysteries-and-majesty-of-nara/

@Sindhoor GK @EvilBuddha

Why do Japanese politicians try so hard to distort their own history and identity? I would recommend the following book and article written by reliable scholars.

https://www.amazon.com/Japan-Shackles-Past-Taggart-Murphy/dp/0190619589

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/in-search-of-japanese-roots

Most Japanese have no idea how many Koreans were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs in 1945, not to mention the conscripted laborers. This is the consequence of the Japanese history textbooks.

@OssanAmerica

When did the Japanese kill over a million Koreans? 

We do know that 5,400,000 Koreans were conscripted for labor beginning in 1939 (line 119), but how many died can only be roughly estimated.

...

Even at these low rates, however, the forced labor toll for Korea comes to 270,000 to 810,000 dead in seven years.

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM

The recently estimated number of conscripted Koreans is 8 million. You may translate the following articles in Korean to Japanese.

https://www.donga.com/news/Politics/article/all/20050118/8150975/1

https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/11/19/2013111901719.html

@Coffee

South Korea is using its victim status to indoctrinate its children to hate Japan. 

It depends on Japan. S. Korea is always defensive. Look at Japan what they are doing now.

Suga sends offering to war-linked Yasukuni Shrine

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3102200/japans-former-pm-shinzo-abe-visits-controversial-yasukuni

Japan's Abe sends offering to Yasukuni war dead shrine on WW2 anniversary

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ww2-anniversary-japan-idUSKCN25A22Z

How Do the Japanese Teach About WWII?

https://youtu.be/9K4zhfMHM4U

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies

Japanese Textbook Controversies, Nationalism, and Historical Memory: Intra- and Inter-national Conflicts

https://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/3173/article.html

https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/the-pearl-harbor-anniversary-japan-still-says-dont-blame-me

@Falco

Koreans are obsessed with things that happened over seventy years ago,

Look back at your own politicians first.

Seventy-five years after Japan’s defeat in World War Two, Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine for war dead is a potent symbol of the controversy that persists over the conflict’s legacy in East Asia.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ww2-anniversary-yasukuni-explainer-idUKKCN25003Z

https://apnews.com/article/world-news-japan-china-yoshihide-suga-tokyo-58880146fcb4520b12cf88472d3f222b

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3102200/japans-former-pm-shinzo-abe-visits-controversial-yasukuni

The two contrary decisions underscore the mixed opinions among judges over whether the assets can be seized or not.

Unlike the conforming Japanese, Korean judges show diverse opinions and verdicts, which is not so bad in a democratic society. International law is still developing, and difficult to interpret. It is not surprising that contrasting decisions are made among judges. Democracy develops by argument and discussion, not by collective uniformity.

The territorial claim of the Japanese government on Takeshima is comical. Japanese people know what 'Takeshima' literally means: bamboo island 竹島, but there is no bamboo in Takeshima.

But, there is another small island called 'bamboo island' (Jukdo 竹島 in Korean) at 2 km (1 mile) east of Ulleungdo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jukdo_(island)

You may see those abundant bamboos there: https://wayfaringflaneur.com/2018/09/02/jukdo%EC%A3%BD%EB%8F%84-bamboo-island/

Japanese government never mentions this real bamboo island (Jukdo in Korean) when they explain their territorial claim. They intentionally omit it, or obfuscate it with Ulleungdo. For example:

https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/takeshima/position.html

https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/na/takeshima/page1we_000057.html

Long times ago, Japanese fishermen certainly recognized the existence of Jukdo 竹島 near Ulleungdo island. At that time, Takeshima did not designate the Liancourt Rocks, but Jukdo to Japanese fishermen. Both Jukdo and Ulleungdo are now Korean territories that Japan and the other countries acknowledge. Now the Japanese government claims the territorial right with a wrong name or a wrong location.

There are 7 Japanese islands called the same name Takeshima (竹島 bamboo island) along the coast of Japan, and all of them have bamboo:

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%AB%B9%E5%B3%B6_(%E6%9B%96%E6%98%A7%E3%81%95%E5%9B%9E%E9%81%BF)

But only one exception is the remotely-located Liancourt Rocks, called 'Dokdo' in Korean, which literally means a rock island. It is a consistency problem. Koreans knew that it consisted of rocks, and therefore bamboo could not grow there. The so-called bamboo island without any bamboo was just an ad hoc, imaginary island for Japan to forcefully occupy Dokdo in 1905. Now they still shout "the bamboo island without any bamboo is a Japanese territory".

@Desert Tortoise Today  03:01 am JST

https://weekly-economist.mainichi.jp/articles/20210608/se1/00m/020/067000d

Is there an English language version I may read? Thanks.

I think Google Translate is not so bad: https://translate.google.com/

Among various reports from the Japanese media, this article in Japanese looks the most accurate in analyzing the current status of the Korean courts. The writer seems to know better than most Koreans in Korean political issues.

https://weekly-economist.mainichi.jp/articles/20210608/se1/00m/020/067000d

Judges are not perfect. The judge is infamous for strange verdicts, which surprised other judges. For example, https://news.joins.com/article/21143383 (in Korean)

Let's wait to see what the higher court will rule.