Voices Erased in the Dark: The Kim Dae-jung Incident and Behind-the-Scenes Japanese and Korean Politics in the 1970s."

Voices Erased in the Dark: The Kim Dae-jung Incident and Behind-the-Scenes Japanese and Korean Politics in the 1970s."

In August 1973, Kim Dae-jung, a South Korean opposition politician, suddenly disappeared from a hotel in Kudanshita, Tokyo, and was later found to have been abducted by the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA).

At the time of the incident, Kim Dae-jung was an anti-establishment politician who advocated democratization in South Korea and was the most dangerous figure in the Park Chung-hee administration. He was in exile in Japan, and his public abduction in Tokyo was the ultimate violation of sovereignty. However, the Japanese government's response to this clear violation of international law was unusually slow and ambiguously contained.

The text is overtly critical of the Japanese government's passive attitude, in which the cabinet of the time (Kakuei Tanaka's administration) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are said to have tacitly approved the backroom deals with the KCIA and the South Korean regime. Furthermore, it is implied that "Yasuhiro Nakasone may have been deeply involved" in regard to the incident, exposing the dark side of the cooperative line against South Korea in the political world.

The report also sharply criticizes the attitude of the mass media, which suppressed the news report in order not to cause a stir in Japan-South Korea relations, and the fact that the truth did not reach the people of Japan. The fact that most newspapers and TV stations simply reported the South Korean government's side of the story and did not delve into the facts exposed the fundamental question of "what is the independence of the press?

The background to these incidents was the Far East security system under the Cold War structure of the early 1970s. The Park Chung-hee administration was seen as an anti-communist bulwark under the aegis of the United States, and the Japanese government also prioritized economic and security cooperation with South Korea. It was a time when regime maintenance and economic interests took precedence over democracy and human rights.

However, this incident also laid the foundation for the later democratization of Korea. After his life was saved, Kim Dae-jung continued to resist the military regime of the 1980s, eventually becoming president in 1997. His abduction and return alive remains a symbolic event that calls into question East Asian political awareness of human rights.