An excessive injection of the concept of ‘God’

With regard to your May 21 column by your editorial writer Kim Jin, my first impression is that he has lost all aspects of rational objectiveness and balance by injecting the concept of “God” as a source of divine retribution for heinous acts committed by man.

As a Japanese, I am not pleased by some of the statements issued by our politicians with regard to attempting to whitewash or deny past war crimes committed by the Japanese military. The crimes committed by the perpetrators were indeed reprehensible and must never be forgotten by future generations. The outrage felt by the surviving victims of such acts is understandable.

However, the writer’s argument that the Japanese of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were punished by God for acts committed by the military goes beyond rational reasoning and also makes one suspect of the writer’s religious belief which is more in tune with those in past history who have ironically justified heinous acts of violence in the name of a supposedly compassionate and all-forgiving God.

In short, Kim is advocating a philosophy of self-justified (in the name of God) violence committed for the sake of revenge. If he truly believes that the wrath of God was behind Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, etc, and that retaliation or revenge against Japan is not complete and that a whole nation may be punished on account of the statements of certain politicians, I would assume that he also believes that the fact that the Koreans are divided into two countries for more than 60 years and that millions of Koreans in North Korea have recently starved to death is a sign that the Koreans have continued to be punished by God since the end of World War II.

by Ko Unoki, Tokyo resident