Ruling party leader: `It`s saddening to see my father is decried as pro-Japanese`

Ruling party leader: `It`s saddening to see my father is decried as pro-Japanese`. October. 30, 2015 08:37. coolup@donga.com.

“My father has been decried as pro-Japanese by the left-wing. As a son, I feel terrible as it would have never happened if I had not been a lawmaker,” Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung said on Thursday when he visited Yeongheung Elementary school in Pohang, which was established by his late father Kim Yong-joo, former chairman of Cheonnam Spinning Co., Ltd.

In front of a bust of his father that was erected in 2011 when the school marked its 100th anniversary, the party chairman placed a bouquet of flowers and a critical biography of his father titled “The Mountain that Crosses the River.”

At a meeting with lawmaker Lee Byeong-seok who graduated from the school and the school principal, he was active in explaining about the controversy over his father’s past pro-Japanese activities.

“Having run a business under Japan’s colonial rule, my father helped Koreans by creating many jobs. It is not right to dig out the past for the purpose of political strife, making wrongful exaggeration and criticizing it,” said Kim. “Come to think of it, my father was such a bold man since he was under a lot of pressure to change the name of his business, which was "Sam-il store." The father chose the name to carry over the spirit of March 1st Movement.

As the opposition party is taking issues of his father’s pro-Japanese activities under the current political context where government-authorized history textbook has become a hot issue, Kim has aggressively responded to it. Some see that the move hints his intentions to run for the next presidential election. One of his aides, however, said that he would refrain from mentioning his father once the controversy over history textbook subsides.