Recently, the movie named ‘Gunhamdo’ was released. The story of the movie is about the Korean people who were persecuted by the Japanese army during the period of Japanese colonial rule. However, there have been some controversies surrounding the movie because some people think that it isn’t based on a true story. Nonetheless, the reason why many people are seeing the movie might be because Koreans have ill feelings against Japan. As a matter of fact, while watching the movie, I was also uncomfortable because of some cruel scenes.
  Korea’s nearest neighbor is Japan. However, the two nations have gradually drifted apart because of two incidents: the Japanese invasion called the Imjin War(1592-1598) and the Japanese colonial rule(1910-1945). Since then, our hard feelings toward Japan have never changed. In addition, there have been many problems between Korea and Japan, such as comfort women, the Dokdo issue and distortions of history. In spite of our efforts to fix the problems, those problems have not been solved yet.
  On August 14, there was a memorial day to commemorate the comfort women. At that time, many kinds of campaigns were conducted. For example, a few young people took part in a flash mob in the hopes that Japan would sincerely apologize for their past aggressions. In addition, in Seoul, one bus company decided to set up a monument for comfort women in a bus. The day right after August 14 was Korea’s Independence Day. The Korean government established the memorial day for liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.
  Since we were young, we all have been taught in class about what Japan did to us and how Korean people were killed by the Japanese army, so it is no wonder that we are sensitive to Japanese-related subjects. However, the problem is that we now tend to loathe the Japanese without any special reason. Some people just get agitated over the mass media, such as dramas and movies, even though they are ignorant about the history between Korea and Japan. What we really need is not just something to vent our anger on but a reasonable anti-Japanese sentiment. If we keep criticizing Japan emotionally, they will stop listening to us. Therefore, we need to distinguish between right and wrong criticisms and then ask them to apologize.