Friday, October 18, 2013

Isnt Money a beautiful thing??!!

I know the title sounds like an exclamation of Joy from a materialist...But this was the thought that I had when I saw the below picture on the walls of a War Memorial built into a historic Prison site in Seoul, South Korea.



In the War memorial, I got to see various kinds of torture chambers that the Japanese had used on the Koreans, during their invasion of Korea and the Korean fight back for freedom, from 1910 to 1945. I even got to see a moving testimony from some of the men and women who had survived the war and lived to tell the tale, of how heartless the imperialists were. Some of them in the video had no hands, no legs or no nails, as they were cut off by the Japanese torturers, but they somehow had a heart strong enough to fight through all the hurdles and bring freedom to their country!

Intrigued, I started a conversation with the War memorial-museum Manager who was a seeming lady of around 40, and she said with barely suppressed emotion, that "All we are expecting, is a 'Sorry' and an acceptance of the troubles and tortures that the Koreans have faced by the Japanese.If not for the innovatively designed torture chambers reserved for the Korean freedom fighters, we deserve an an apology at least to the 'Comfort women' who were exploited in ways unimaginable by the Japanese military...But even a simple apology is not something that the Japanese are ready to give."

I came back home to Shanghai and narrated this incident to some of my friends, and their response was an angry eruption, but a totally expected one. "They will never say Sorry. Why should they? Unless they are pushed into a corner, they will not. Its all about the power game and about who plays their pawns at the right time to get the right result! Right now, Japan is in a position of power and will not bow down, but maybe sometime in the future...." and they wistfully looked with glazed eyes, into a future, where I imagine a Japanese official is on his knees offering them a lengthy apology!

One of the more pragmatic ones however said, " But today, we need them. Our country is not yet so self sufficient, that we can afford to spoil our relations with Japan." How true!  From electronics, to heavy machinery, when it comes to quality products, the Chinese localites prefer Japanese products and so do the Koreans. When we look at the trade charts of China and Korea, Japan is high up on the %age of trade that the countries carry on with each other.

On one hand. we have the foreign ministries of Korea, China and Japan trying to solve various bloody land disputes even today,which positively laughs at the idea of the countries having any other meaningful relationship, and yet, incredibly, on the other hand, we have the economic ministers drafting new and improved trade policies to enhance trade between the countries. Well yes, the countries are still struggling hard to find their peace with the bloody past that they share. But the beautiful master plan of providence has balanced the resources of the countries in such a way that, both China and Korea, because of necessity, require to maintain an intensive trade relationship with Japan and vice versa. Maybe this is Nature's way of forcing them to make peace with the past, by making them deal with each other through an unemotional monetary relationship that contributes to their countries' growth and their people's happiness, and thus could be an indirect balm on the wounds of past! If Money can actually bring countries together, can make them forget a horrific and bloody past and shake hands in the hope of a better tomorrow, isn't it a beautiful thing?