Helena Meyer-Knapp

Member of the Faculty- The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA USA

Helena Meyer-Knapp

Japan and Korea

March 11th, 2011 · No Comments · 5. Images symbolizing political relationships, Japan and Korea

2010 marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Japan’s official colonization of Korea. The colonization lasted until 1945 and Japan’s defeat in World War II. In the two countries, the key sites for this research mark the relationship in quite different ways.

In Korea, at Seodaemun PrisonP1070313

and at the Cheonan Independence Hall,P1060048

 

 

 

 

 

 

the physical brutality of the Japanese P1070296

towards Korean resistance movements is central. In the dioramas students hear sound effects as well as visual representations of Japanese soldiers actually torturing people. They are also encouraged to “play” with instruments of torture themselves.  P1060071

In Japan it took a long time for places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki even to acknowledge that Korean forced laborers had been among the victims.

P1080780In recent years,Hiroshima has moved the Korean Memorial inside the peace park and also listed all the known Korean victims by name in the Hall of Remembrance.hiroshimaguidetrilingual1

In Okinawa, the Korean memorial is central on the map but on the ground it is hard to find the entrance.

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