'Verifying ancestors' deeds and punishing descendants are separate issues,' Japanese media say of Ha Young controversy

Japanese media have taken strong interest in the controversy surrounding actor Ha Young, who has faced public backlash over allegations that her ancestors collaborated with Japanese colonial rule.

Some Japanese outlets have drawn comparisons to similar controversies involving actors Gang Dong-won and Lee Ji-ah, who faced criticism over their own ancestors' alleged pro-Japanese activities, and have characterized the broader phenomenon as a "modern-day guilt-by-association system."

Fuji News Network (FNN) ran a column Wednesday titled "The Heavy Meaning of 'Pro-Japanese' in Korea."

Kamoshika Hiromi, a professor at Konan Women's University and a guest commentator for Fuji TV, detailed the Ha Young controversy and said that "memories related to Japan's colonial rule still cast a shadow over Korean society, giving the word 'pro-Japanese' a strong political and emotional weight." She added that in Korea, "the term 'chinilpa' does not simply mean someone who is friendly toward Japan — it primarily refers to those who collaborated with Japanese colonial rule and carries a condemnation close to that of 'traitor.'"

She then said there is a Korean saying that "three generations are ruined if you join the independence movement, and three generations prosper if you collaborate with Japan," describing it as an expression of anger over the history in which those who cooperated with colonial rule retained their wealth and status after liberation while independence fighters and their families suffered imprisonment, torture and poverty.

Kamoshika said the perception that "the purge of pro-Japanese collaborators was insufficient" remains deeply rooted, and that "when allegations of pro-Japanese collaboration are raised against the ancestors of a socially successful figure, it is easy for the sentiment to arise that their descendants also prospered thanks to that collaboration."

However, she said "verifying an ancestor's deeds and imposing social sanctions on their descendants are separate matters," and said that pulling Ha Young's programs and advertisements from public access over allegations about her great-grandfather amounts to a "modern-day guilt-by-association system."

She went on to say that "it is necessary to distinguish between confirmed acts and unsubstantiated allegations, between ancestors and descendants, and between historical responsibility and present-day political attacks," warning that "otherwise, the targets of 'pro-Japanese' accusations could spread indefinitely, and we risk losing the very standard of what should be criticized and remembered."

Conservative outlet JB Press published a piece by reporter Lee Jeong-seon, who was born in Busan and graduated from a Japanese university, under the headline "Why Does Korea Not Forgive the Descendants of Pro-Japanese Collaborators?"

The outlet said the Korean entertainment industry has long been haunted by a "scarlet letter" — the stigma of being "a descendant of a pro-Japanese collaborator" — and covered not only the Ha Young case but also those of actors Gang Dong-won and Lee Ji-ah, as well as instances in which Japanese entertainers who had sought to enter the Korean market were derailed by controversies over being descendants of wartime companies or over right-wing associations.

The outlet noted that South Korea's National Assembly frequently sees bills modeled on Germany's laws punishing the glorification of Nazism, including proposed special acts criminalizing the glorification of Japanese colonial rule, and said that "these bills, which seek to have the state adjudicate historical consciousness and criminalize expressions that deviate from state-sanctioned views of history, present an utterly bizarre spectacle — driven by a major party bearing the name 'democratic' in a country that calls itself a 'democratic nation.'"

It then said Korean society "takes it for granted that descendants should bear the sins of their forebears, and even seeks to put expressions about history on trial through legislation," and said that "what Korean society truly needs to be alert to may not be forgetting history, but the reality that history is becoming a tool to judge people living today."