Fed-Kun's army
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2018
- Messages
- 537
You have to understand that when the novel was written, SL was still largely an internal Korean phenomenon. And for domestic consumption, if you need a baddie, you pick Japan. It's an obvious, easy choice. You don't need a setup. You don't need to develop a motivation for them . You don't even need a reason for them. It's like if you're a cowboy, you pick Indian as your enemy. If you are Allies, you pick the Axis. If you're the US during the Cold War, you pick Soviet Russia. Now, you'd pick ISIS or Al Qaeda or even Taliban. Now, most of those conflicts have been largely resolved between those participants but not so for Korea/Japan, China/Japan, and indeed the Rest of Asia/Japan. You can argue this for ages. Certainly, there are nationalistic and political reasons to keep this conflict going, but overshadowing those reasons, there is also the persistent and fresh refusal by the Japanese national government (the same continuation of a single nationalistic party that had dominated Japanese national politics for almost all of the past-WW2 period) to accept responsibility and to diffuse and minimize the conduct of Imperial Japanese Forces during the war, and the imperialistic period preceding the war. It's a shockingly brutal piece of history if you look into it, and if you want to criticize how Korea and the rest of Asia still about this period, you have to look into it. And it wasn't just Asia either. Australia and people, including civilians, from the colonizing power were brutalized, like Australian nurses captured on the beach while attempting to escape from Singapore, raped and brutalized, only to be forced into the waves waist deep and machined gunned down. Wholesale rape and murder by the Japanese were not only commonplace but they were well documented, not just by the victims but by Western journalists and diplomats (people with impeccable credentials) from countries that had no hostilities with Japan. Some were even allied with Japan at the time. Their shocked and disbelieving, even as they watched, accounts all survived. This kind of systematic, normalized atrocities simply didn't happen wars anymore. The only thing that came even remotely close was the final moments of the Eastern front between the Soviets and Germany, but that was a result of a long brutal campaign where one brutality triggered another in response and they built on top of each other. The Japanese atrocities were almost immediate and unceasing. If any of this is news to you, you probably are not qualified to judge the Korean and other Asian countries "nationalistic beef" with Japan. I mean, how would you feel if the government leaders in Germany led an annual procession to a national memorial interning the bodies of Hitler and Goering and the like? What if Pakistan, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabian government annually celebrated Osama bin Laden Day? But that's what Japan does with the Yasukuni Shrine each year. And what if Germany systematically reduced, ignored and whitewashed their well documented war crimes in WW2 in their mandatory school books? That is also what Japan does.
Still, people make business decisions these days and Korea and the rest of Asia trades with Japan. The manhwa reaches more people and wider market than the LN and along the way, business decisions have been made. That's actually the aberration in this, not the original content. But I assure you the feelings still fester. And like I said, if any of this was news to you, it if you're not aware of the extent of Japanese atrocities and the subsequent whitewashing, you should educate yourself before forming an opinion as to whether that is appropriate still or not.
Still, people make business decisions these days and Korea and the rest of Asia trades with Japan. The manhwa reaches more people and wider market than the LN and along the way, business decisions have been made. That's actually the aberration in this, not the original content. But I assure you the feelings still fester. And like I said, if any of this was news to you, it if you're not aware of the extent of Japanese atrocities and the subsequent whitewashing, you should educate yourself before forming an opinion as to whether that is appropriate still or not.
I try super hard to not think about plot holes and inconsistencies overall and treat this as a piece of not-so-serious-entertainment, but it's hard to resist an urge to scream out "whyyy" 
