Have you guys seen this flag before?
I feel like a lot of people assume that this is a cool way to draw the Japanese flag or something, but it isn’t.
This flag is called the Rising Sun flag. And it seems to me that people aren’t too aware of the history behind this flag and why it should not be used.
This flag was used by the imperial Japanese army.
When Korea was under Japanese rule in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s, my people were treated like animals.
My great grandmother was a lucky few that wasn’t robbed of her culture and language in her generation.
My great grandmother’s brother was a teacher, and Japanese men took him and rolled him in a hay carpet and beat him up. He was always sick and wobbled when he walked until the day he passed away.
These are the less scarier stories, because my mother’s family was one of the richer families.
Women were kidnapped and taken as sex-slaves for the army. They were raped and were tortured.
Children were beat to death by Japanese teachers.
My people were used in all sorts of experiments to fulfill curiosity.
I’m not gonna speak more about the terrible things because they were horrendous and inhumane. You can do some researches on your own.
I’m not much of an expert, but the Chinese also went through the similar things as we did.
But that flag was hung all around Korea during that time. This flag is a constant reminder of what my families had to go through.
This flag is no better than the Swastika.
This flag will forever be tied to the horror that my people had to go through.
It is so disgusting to see people justify this flag because it “was originally a symbol for good prosperity”.
Swastika was “originally a symbol of well-being”.
Does that give me the right to wear the flag around in every merchandise? and when a Jewish person comes up and tells me that it is offends them and explains the history, can I just say “It originally wasn’t the Nazi sign. It’s only cultural appreciation.”?
But when I looked up the Rising Sun Flag, it says that the use of the flag is controversial because Koreans and Taiwanese take offense to the flag, and it pretty much says that people were told not to bring it to Olympics for the sake of the butt-hurt Koreans and Chinese people.
As if we weren’t supposed to take offense to this flag.
Although I’m not an expert of everything related to this, I’ll do my best to answer if you have any questions.
Also, no, I don’t have any ill feelings toward Japan. (some of my family members do, because their parents and siblings were killed and/or was tortured)
Although I do want the government to acknowledge and apologize the fact that they did in fact torture my people, and teach what happened to their students.
I am not angry at the Japanese citizens.
The reason why I’m making this post is because this white anime-lover boy came to school with a shirt with this flag during our school’s color wars by grade, and he has been wearing the shirt every year.
Even after a lot of our Korean students asked nicely him to not wear the shirt again. Every. Year.
He manages to complain about the “so much shit I got” from wearing the flag.
I asked him later and he word for word said “Yeah, the Japanese raped the shit out of your women” he knew the history just as much as we did. He justified it with cultural appreciation.
I know that some people may own merchandise with this flag on without knowing what it means, or even sell it without knowing.
But please, it really hurts us when we see this flag justified, worn and drawn all around by all sorts of people.
So please, educate yourself, and others.
Spread the word.