The number of visitors to Japan was 568,600, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO). The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) announced the number of Koreans who visited Japan in February of this year. The number of reviews and photos of their trips to Japan have been popping up on social networking sites. However, there are some movements in Korea that seem to be putting a damper on this trend. On CLIEN, a leading anti-Japanese leftist community website, there have recently been almost daily posts about the rush of Koreans to travel to Japan. The site is filled with Korean words such as “pro-Japan and traitorous acts.
Some of the posts are so extreme that even ordinary citizens are raising their eyebrows.
At the end of January this year, there was a post titled “Things you should not do if you decide to visit the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The posters were asked to “buy a good luck charm” and “write a wish on an ema,” and it was written, “If you write a wish on an ema and pray to Emperor Meiji, who invaded and colonized Korea, the emperor will look down on you.
The usual feeling is that if you care about such things, you should not go to Meiji Shrine, or even to Japan ……. However, dozens of comments were written in support of this, seemingly from anti-Japanese groups. The comments continue to make one want to cover one’s eyes, making fun of the ema (votive tablet) written in Korean, saying, “Young people these days are not educated in history,” “They have forgotten history and have no sense of shame,” “We must write a wish for Japan’s destruction,” and so on.
Sticking the middle finger to the statue of Hideyoshi
This is a bit old, but the reporter visited the Meiji Shrine in August 2008. There, he happened to find an ema (votive tablet) written in Korean. It read in Japanese, “Dokdo definitely belongs to Korea. On the side, there was another ema written by the same Korean, in which he had come to Japan to meet his lover and had written a wish that his love with him would be eternal. He wished for the fulfillment of his love at the Meiji Shrine, and at the same time wrote, “Dokdo is Korean territory! I twisted my head at the psychology of it all. I twisted my head at the psychology behind this. I wondered what kind of life he was leading.
His posts on “Kurian” have become even more extreme. One photo was taken in front of the bronze statue of Toyotomi Hideyoshi at Osaka Castle, with the comment, “I take one photo every time I go to Osaka Castle. It was written as if he made a trip to Osaka to take this picture.
Another problem is the malicious misinformation posted about travel to Japan: In mid-March, a user posted a note to those going on a trip to Japan, saying, “I would not go to Japan at this time of the year because I would be too pissed off. The user posted a photo taken at a restaurant in Namba, Osaka, which is well-known among Korean tourists, saying, “They use rice from Fukushima. Please show this picture to people who are going to Japan and mock them.
Aside from being an act of inciting rumors about Fukushima, it turns out that the photo was circulating during the storm of boycotts of Japanese products in South Korea in 2019. So it was not even taken recently.
Is the opposition agitation a factor?
Not only in Kurian, but the sites of the leftist community are filled with blatant anti-Japanese and disdain for Japanese travelers. While many of the posts are thinly based and bellyaching, there is also criticism that the left-wing opposition parties are fueling these movements.
In March, the left-wing party, the Co-operative Democratic Party, published a commentary immediately after the summit meeting between President Yun Seong-yeol and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. In addition to dismissing the meeting as “humiliating diplomacy,” the party’s representative, Lee Jae-myung, said, “It seems that Japan is sympathizing with Japan’s military power that poses a permanent threat to the peninsula and the neutralization of the Peace Constitution. I am worried that the Japanese Self-Defense Forces will once again be stationed on this peninsula. On March 29, he submitted a written request to the National Assembly to “convene a national political investigation to determine the truth about the Korea-Japan summit,” and has not accepted the results of this meeting.
Mr. H, 48, an organization employee, stated.
I am not a supporter of the Yun Suk-yeon administration, but I find the behavior of the leftist community offensive. I feel sorry for them. I wonder how foreigners would feel if they came to a tourist attraction in Korea, such as Gyeongbokgung in Seoul or Bulguksa Temple in Gyeongju, and saw papers posted all over the place with complaints about Korea. Koreans would be displeased. Don’t they have time to think about that? They must all think that what they say is totally correct.
This is the feeling of the average Korean citizen. ……
