The difference between corporal punishment and other punishments (removal and non-corporal application) is that corporal punishment is a direct, personal physical aggression directed at one’s person. It is primal in nature and taps into our basic self-preservation insticts. For these reason, it is far more personal, far more intrusive and far more likely to produce highly negative, visceral reasction in the recipient.
As far as carrying grievances around for the rest of one’s life, it seems clear that these grievances intertwined with the physical manner of the punishment. So it is quite reasonable that the resultant animosity is directed toward corporal punishment and not a projection onto it.
You might get the same sort of reaction from a person who was constantly demeaned emotionally as punishment too. But then again you don’t usually find a cadre of individuals defending and supporting abusive emotional punishment the way you do with corporal punishment.