Guilt Trip

Ikuko Nishimura approaches me as I stand on the deck of the Peace Boat, watching the North Korean port of Wonsan draw closer. A middle-aged Japanese housewife from the southern city of Yamaguchi, Nishimura is too young to remember much about Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula more than half a century ago, too young to remember her country's brutal subjugation of Koreans during World War II. But as a Japanese, she feels a collective guilt for the sins of an older generation. "I'm sorry," she says suddenly, bowing in the direction of Wonsan's sweeping harbor, where a huge bronze statue...

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