opinion

There is a nose tomb in Kyoto, Japan.

Coming into being in September 1597, the tomb reportedly contains the noses of 214 752 people.

The tomb shows a distress-torn history of the Korean people caused by brutal atrocities committed by Japan in the period of the Imjin Patriotic War (1592-1598).

The Japanese, who had long stepped up preparations for an aggressive war against Korea, invaded the country all of a sudden by committing huge troops in April 1592.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, chieftain of the invasion of Korea at that time, ordered troops to cut the necks of other peoples, ranging from young and old, men and women, to monks and send them to Japan, saying that he wanted to make a neck tomb of other nations in a seven-point notification. And later he made sure that ears or noses were cut, saying the head is too heavy.

Toyotomi told his henchmen: “Each soldier should cut the nose of Koreans in place of their heads as every human has two ears and one nose. I allow each soldier to capture enemies alive only after collecting a doe (about 1.8 litres) of noses.”

Accordingly, the Japanese aggressors recognized the military exploits of their soldiers with the amount of noses cut from the Koreans.

According to historical records, in the early winter of 1592, the first year of war, the Japanese invaders sent the left ears and noses of more than 70 Korean soldiers in Kangwon Province to Toyotomi in Japan and received a letter of thanks, and in July 1597 when they occupied Sachon, they cut 38 717 ears or noses of the Korean people and sent to Japan by containing them in ten-odd wooden boxes. There is a historical record that a Japanese general called Nabeshima and his son cut some 4 660 ears and noses of the Korean people.

The Japanese murderers killed all the Koreans they met and cut their noses to send them to nose collecting officers in order to perform “distinguished military exploits”. They even cut noses of live Koreans. As a result, there were reportedly many noseless people in Korea after the Imjin Patriotic War was over.

Even today, this nose tomb is being used as a means of heightening a sense of superiority of the Yamato nation, national chauvinism and wild ambition for overseas aggression.

The Korean people sternly watch Japan which behaves impudently buoyed by the wild ambition for the reinvasion of other countries, far from making an apology and reparations for its sinful past, and harden their will to take vengeance on it without fail.