RESPONSE:
This is known as a leading question, which actually is speculation and innuendo. By contrast, I ask rhetorical questions to suggest new approaches to old controversies.

And I took you up on the new approach: I wanted to know the validity of your parallel, so I asked if you know of any “war criminals” from the Vietnam War, World War II, or the Kwangju Uprising who are interred at the National Cemetery. Again, do you?

I love the way you attempt to deconstruct all of my posts.

It’s called fisking, and I have mentioned things I agree with, too.

Sometimes it adds to the dialogue and sometimes its just a staw man argument to be argumentative.

The supposed strawman arguments were not at all. They were questions seeking clarification of your position, not attempts to define what you think. They involved legitimate questions to further the argument. Since you brought it up as a parallel, do you know of any Korean war criminals from the conflicts you mentioned who are buried at the National Cemetery?

KUSHIBO:
“Worries that a once-penitent Japan is now trying to whitewash its history and is downplaying its own massive aggression when it teaches its children, while trying now to expand its military and its military role, is NOT nonsense.”

RESPONSE: That’s where we differ. You say it’s not nonsence and I say it is.

Past behaviors are an indication of future behaviors. This is why it is wrong for Korea to whitewash its own atrocities (e.g., POW camp guards) because those things can be repeated (e.g., reputed brutality by Korean soldiers in Vietnam). It also applies to Japan: if Japanese do not learn of their own country’s aggression leading up to and during World War II, the possibility of it happening again is considerably greater.

I say the age of military Imperialism ended after WWII and that Korea’s main concerns should be in the economic sphere.

Korea’s main concerns should be the economic (and social) spheres. Absolutely. But it would be foolish to ignore potential military threats, and Korea has three: North Korea, to a lesser degree China, and much further down in terms of potential, Japan.

You say it’s constructive to dwell on past regressions. Do you really think so?

It is foolish to do otherwise. And it is not just about Japan, but also China. What bothers me so much about some Koreans’ recent flirting with China is how easily China’s culpability for the division of Korea is ignored, and with it, the threat of China. It also bothers me how some people here fail to realize what an overall beneficial role the United States has played for Koreans from the 1940s to the presentday.

Do you really see a military threat coming out of Japan?

In the present situation, no. The status quo of the Pax Americana has kept a once-volatile Northeast Asia amazingly peaceful. With the U.S. continuing that role (which is also in U.S. economic, political, and social interests) and Japan retaining its pacifist constitution and Korea staying firmly in the democratic U.S. camp, along with Taiwan, I don’t see a threat from Japan, and little chance for Japan or South Korea to have a flare-up with China or North Korea.

But once the status quo is changed, all bets are off. Japan is trying to strenghten its military to become “a normal country” while at the same time there are attempts by the right to sanitize Japan’s 20th century atrocities while asserting that Japan had no choice but to invade China, occupy Korea and Taiwan, and attack the United States, for its own security. That, in turn, makes China think it is necessary to have not just a deterrent to a Taiwan-led or U.S.-sponsored invasion, but one that is strong enough to preemptively destroy Japan’s new military.

Attitudes by both China and Japan are an important part of that, and the other sides should call them on their bullshit. Korea and Taiwan, the least aggressive of the main players here, or the United States with the best democratic record (and maybe Australia) should be calling China on its own intra-national atrocities (not to mention its historical treatment of the Korean War), while condemning Japanese attempts to whitewash its own.

The “Japan bad Korea good” argument is only a single instance of the overarching phenomenon that I call the Korean logical fallacy. The purpose of challenging it is to alert people to ways in which they are manipulated and to encourage a more rigorous thought process.

I do get your line of reasoning, and I agree it is a serious problem. A very serious problem.

Where I part ways with you, I think, is on two points: how universal this is and how unique it is to Korea. There are plenty of examples of media outlets that take a reasonable look at both sides. To take a recent example from Marmot’s, the MBC investigative program calling Dr. Hwang into question. I know from my experience working in news media that there is a lot more critical analysis taking both sides into account than one would glean from the comments at Marmot’s Hole and some other Korean blogs.

Second, as I’ve also said recently, if one were take the worst examples from other major countries, one could come to the same conclusion about biploar pro- versus anti- views of said country.

We have politicians and radio hosts in America suggesting that opponents of Bush are “anti-American” or “un-American” or “trying to destroy America” or “America-hating.”

The home of “Freedom Fries” is the land of the “America: Love it or leave it!” bumper sticker. A certain close relative of mine recently told me that she thinks that it is “un-American” for me to say anything criticizing the U.S. government (I’m a U.S. citizen) when I’m outside the country, apparently not an uncommon sentiment.

I’m not saying this makes it okay for Korea to do this (it certainly doesn’t), but I’m just pointing out that it’s not a uniquely Korean problem and it’s not saying much or solving anything to suggest this is endemic to Korea without significant parallels in the U.S. and other countries related to Korea.

Now I’m starting to take offense. I do not need any “straightening out” on Kwangju. I thought I had made it clear that Colin misunderstood what I was writing about (sloppy pronoun reference on my part).

I know people who were there who witnessed it first hand, as well. I have no patience for deniers of this tragedy.

When I said that “I have not heard of that happening either,” I was referring to that as the burial of Kwangju “war criminals” at the National Cemetery, not the actual atrocities committed by the Korean military in Kwangju in 1980.

After Colin misunderstood what I had written, I thought I’d made that clear when I said of the atrocities, “I don’t think that was in dispute, not here at least.”