Xenophobia and misinformation: Why Japan’s 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake led to a Korean massacre
The year 1923 stands out as a turbulent moment in modern Japanese history because of the catastrophic Great Kanto Earthquake that brought Tokyo and surrounding regions to their knees. Yet even as tens of thousands perished under collapsed buildings or in raging infernos, a more insidious tragedy unfolded with the systematic targeting and murder of Koreans who lived in the region. The attacks were brutal and widespread, and exposed deep prejudices that had long simmered beneath Japan’s veneer of progress at that time. Even today, more than one hundred years later, the fate of Koreans caught in that deadly...
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