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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

Due to the Japan boycott, Uniqlo and Muji here in Korea are ghost towns, I don't know why they bother putting them in this market. it's pretty uncommon to see them busy. There is a huge Uniqlo next to my house and I was literally the only one in it yesterday.

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Could you provide more information on this boycott? I'm not sure I've heard of it before now.

Sure, this wikipedia article is pretty accurate[1]. It comes down to a series of pretty complex issues between South Korea and Japan. Although the current boycott is usually talked about in the news as a result of what SK perceives to be an unfair trade relationship, the tension amongst the average person I talk to comes down to the lack of apology by Japan over comfort women, and more recently the Liancourt Islands[2]. Japan has updated it's High School history curriculum to state the Islands are owned by Japan and not mentioning the disputed status, while SK teaches about the dispute. As a result of all of this, many many Koreans won't shop at Japanese brands[3]. (I am not Korean however I live in Korea)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Japan%E2%80%...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liancourt_Rocks_dispute

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_boycott_of_Japanese_produ...

These deficiencies in Japanese education are self-reinforcing; people who are unaware of these things will not pressure the state to include them in the curriculum. Of course, I'm sure SK doesn't talk much about their greatest moral embarrassments.

In USA public schools the same history course is given ten grades in a row. Somehow it neglects to include anything about Wounded Knee, USA actions in Philippines, Mosaddegh coup, COINTELPRO, School of the Americas, etc.

Definitely didn't cover COINTELPRO but the Philippines and Wounded Knee were definitely covered. We rarely got past 1960 so most of the more recent US actions were uncovered.

Honestly, I'm jealous. For so much of my life I was deeply skeptical of history as a field of study. It seemed arbitrary and useless. It turned out that what I'd seen of the subject was a bogus selective narrative carefully constructed to make me ignore the fact that the polity to which I am subject has been at war against non-white people for centuries. I probably should have been smart enough to figure this out earlier, but I wasn't. I wish that rather than constituting a complete waste of time, public school history classes could have better acquainted me with the world as it really is. Although, I wonder if that younger me would even have cared? The war media has a strong effect on inquisitive young minds. So much trivial bullshit to learn!

Don't worry, its going hard the other direction, based on what the average school teacher says who's in their 20s and 30s.

I wish that were true. If it were, one would expect to see some results outside the classroom. Are we fighting fewer stupid wars? I don't think we can say that yet.

It's only happened in the past 5-10 years, so all the people who have received a very leftist narrative of history are children right now.

Similarly, we don't teach about the Canadian Indian residential school system in high school, and non-native Canadians have a difficult time empathizing with the state of reserves. Does any country do a good job of this?

Germany does a good job of owning their past it seems like.

Well they sure teach it now, although not when I was in school.

I'm not sure what your point is. We should accept atrocities because everyone is doing it?

I'm surprised people here love uniqlo so much. They use Uygher slave labor.

It’s possible you heard about it a whole ago, it’s been an ongoing boycott for a while:

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_internation...

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=4...

https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/japanese-firms-exit-south-ko...

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