Colonial Sentiment & Discrimination

                  Colonial Sentiment & Discrimination?           Yu-Han (Frank) Chang

This film was a shocker for me personally. I was surprised to see that after almost ¾ of a century there was still a strong anti-Korean sentiment in Japan. The Korean schools were classified as vocational schools and the students were not granted with the official high school diplomas and an automatic entry to the college education system. The students fell to victims of the general discrimination and anti-Korean sentiment, more specifically to the North Korea. I found this attitude intriguing when compared to other countries that were also colonized during the Japanese Imperial era. For instance, Taiwan was also a colony of the Japanese empire when the Chinese Qin dynasty lost in a war to Japan. Taiwanese people were forced to take on Japanese names and underwent Japanese education. The majority of the high-end positions and jobs were also only opened to Japanese soldiers and officials. As a child who grew up in Taiwan, I have heard numerous stories from my grandparents who grew up during the era. For the most parts, most Taiwanese appreciated the Japanese for local infrastructures and improvements in the general living conditions. Moreover, the Japanese and Taiwanese governments have been rather friendly with one another, especially when contrasted to the Japan-China and Japan-Korea relations. Overall, the opposite sentiments from and to the two countries that were both colonized by the same third country really struck me as odd. I think it is critical to answer this question to better understand the difficult situations the students and school were in in the documentary and possibly a way to resolve in the future. But historically, what could have caused this difference in sentiments?