— Overview
This reading starts from a Holocaust-denial trial on film, and stops at a sixty-year contrast between Germany and Japan.
— Contents and key concepts
A film titled Denial
This reading begins with a film they title ‘나는 부정한다’ — Denial. It tells, they write, a true story. After the history of the Nazi genocide of the Jews in the Second World War was written down, one person denied that he had done any such thing, and denied that the thing itself had happened, and a legal battle lasting four years followed.
The Holocaust, they add, is an event so plainly attested that it has its own name. What stunned them was that the person who brought the suit claimed both that the event had never occurred and that he had been tied to a thing that ‘never existed.’ Watching, they found the denial itself almost unbelievable, and at the same time could not help fearing that a court might somehow rule that the genocide had not taken place. In the film, they write, evidence is gathered, and the fact of the Holocaust is established.
A resemblance closer to home
They then say they did not really need to look for that story in a cinema. Watching Japan’s distortion of history, and its response to the comfort-women issue, they felt they had already seen the main line of the film — apart from the clear proving of the Holocaust and the obtaining of an apology. The part that had seemed absurd on the screen was, they write, what Japan has openly carried out.
A Panorama on two paths
Why, they ask, is the Nazi genocide treated as obviously Germany’s wrong, a harm of imperialism that calls for active apology and redress, while for harms of Japanese colonial rule, including the comfort-women issue, even an apology has had to be asked for, let alone redress? The work that sets out to explain that contrast, they say, is KBS Panorama’s ‘속죄하는 나라, 망각하는 나라’ — A Country That Atones, a Country That Forgets.
The program, they write, looks for the causes of the opposite ways Germany and Japan — both aggressor states in the Second World War, and Japan also in the Asia-Pacific War — have taken up war responsibility, from the remaking of postwar social order through the sixty years that had then passed. This reading leaves the contrast at that span, as the program then showed it. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.
Sources
- This reading, a student reading of the film Denial and of KBS Panorama’s A Country That Atones, a Country That Forgets: a four-year denial trial on film, then a contrast between German and Japanese paths on war responsibility, kept in this reading’ then-present span of sixty years.
Last updated: 15 November 2026
Frequently asked questions
What film do this reading begins with?
A film they title ‘나는 부정한다’ — Denial. It is, they write, a true story: after the history of the Nazi genocide of the Jews was set down, one person denied that such a thing had ever happened, and a four-year legal battle followed. He had sued for libel, they say, claiming he had been tied to an event that ‘never existed.’
Why do they turn from the film to Japan?
The film, they write, proves the Holocaust with evidence. Yet they felt they hardly needed a cinema for the larger shape of the story: watching Japan’s distortion of history and its response to the comfort-women issue, they say, they had already seen the main line, apart from the film’s clear proof and the obtaining of an apology. What had seemed absurd on the screen was, they write, what Japan has openly done.
Where do they stop?
They ask why the Nazi genocide is treated as obviously Germany’s wrong, calling for apology and redress, while apology and redress for harms of Japanese colonial rule, including the comfort-women issue, have been so hard to obtain. The work that sets out to explain that contrast, they say, is KBS Panorama’s ‘속죄하는 나라, 망각하는 나라’ (A Country That Atones, a Country That Forgets). It follows how Germany and Japan — both aggressor states in the Second World War, and Japan also in the Asia-Pacific War — took opposite paths on war responsibility, from the remaking of postwar social order through the sixty years to this reading’ then-present. They stop there.
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