'Thawing' between Seoul and Tokyo — A false spring?
'Thawing' between Seoul and Tokyo —
a false spring?
WRITTEN BY DR KEVIN GRAY
7 April 2023
The recent summitry between South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida marks a significant thaw in diplomatic relations between the countries — at least, on the surface. The visit comes on the heels of a deal proposed by Seoul to establish a fund to compensate Korean victims of wartime forced labour mobilisation. This proposal is ostensibly aimed at drawing a line under the two countries’ contentious history on the subject and at setting bilateral relations on a more cooperative footing.
Relations between the two countries have long been fractious and contested. However, relations took a particularly sharp downturn in 2018, following a Korean Supreme Court’s ruling that ordered two Japanese companies (Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) to compensate the families of Koreans who had been mobilised as forced labour during the Second World War.
In retaliation, Tokyo imposed restrictions on exports of key chemicals to South Korea (essential to the latter’s semiconductor industry). This action sparked public outrage in South Korea, and over 70 per cent of Koreans participated in a boycott of Japanese goods. The apparent resolution of this issue now not only reduces barriers to greater bilateral cooperation but also has wider regional ramifications by creating the conditions for trilateral Japan-South Korea-US cooperation to tackle threats from China and North Korea. But it is far from certain that the recent deal between Tokyo and Seoul will stick.
Misplaced optimism
Tensions between Japan and South Korea have long impeded Washington’s goal of bringing the two countries together as part of a trilateral alliance to tackle ongoing challenges from China and North Korea. Indeed, the tensions resulting from the South Korean court’s 2018 decision spilled over into the security realm, nearly scuppering a military intelligence-sharing pact between the two countries.
The apparent ‘thaw’ of Korea-Japan relations is likely to be a ‘false spring’ rather than a genuine new era of bilateral relations and broader regional cooperation.
It is little surprise then that the Biden administration was quick to signal its support for Seoul’s new proposal, with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tweeting: “We welcome today's historic announcements by the Republic of Korea and Japanese governments regarding the conclusion of their bilateral discussions. The ROK and Japan are two of our most important allies, and we are inspired by their work”.
However, this optimism appears misplaced as the proposal is fundamentally flawed in several respects. First, the proposal does not establish a basis for reconciliation between the two countries. Rather, it takes the form of an apparently one-sided capitulation on the part of the South Korean government to Japan. In contrast to long-standing demands from the victims of forced labour for compensation from Japan, it is South Korean companies that will be compensating the victims under this deal, rather than Japan.
A deal between the colonised country and its erstwhile coloniser, where the former shoulders the financial burden of compensation, is remarkable. It is unlikely to be accepted by the South Korean public as a just and legitimate resolution to these long-running historical animosities.
Second, the proposal did not demand a new statement of remorse from Japan concerning the issue of forced labour. South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin’s announcement of Seoul’s proposal included the vague aspiration that Tokyo would respond sincerely by “implementing its previous public statements expressing remorse and apology”. However, no such sentiments were to be seen during Yoon’s summit with Kishida.
While Yoon sought to counter domestic criticism by saying that Tokyo has apologised many times in the past, the widespread perception among South Koreans is that the sincerity of such apologies is undermined by the subsequent statements and actions of the Japanese government. These include explicit denials of wartime sexual slavery by Japanese politicians (including the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe), the rewriting of Japanese history textbooks to omit references to Japanese war crimes and to present colonial history in a more positive light, and the Japanese government’s ongoing international campaign against statues erected in memory of the so-called ‘comfort women’. The victims of forced labour themselves have unsurprisingly opposed the deal, arguing that the compensation, and an accompanying apology, should come from Japan.
Historical origins
Unfortunately, however, the deal represents a long history in which grievances related to the colonial past have been suppressed as a result of broader geopolitical imperatives. Indeed, a key reason why tensions between South Korea and Japan have remained unresolved for so long relates to the specific nature of the end of the Second World War.
As I argue in a recent paper, the US military occupations of both countries at the end of the Second World War were not interested in addressing injustices or facilitating a genuine process of decolonisation, but rather in establishing strong anti-communist pro-US regimes. The resolution of historical issues and grievances was therefore repressed in both countries in favour of these emergent Cold War imperatives.
The 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea was emblematic of this history and how the victims of the colonial and wartime eras had been neglected in favour of broader strategic goals. That Treaty, brokered by strongman leader (and former military officer in the Japanese army during the colonial era) President Park Chung-hee, paved the way for significant aid and investment from Japan, which assisted in South Korea’s developmental drive.
Yet, the Treaty was carried out against widespread popular protests. Seoul and Tokyo disputed whether the Treaty ruled out future private claims for compensation by victims of the colonial and wartime era. For Tokyo, the Treaty served as a pretext to counter subsequent demands by Korean citizens for the redress of historical injustices, even in relation to issues that were not known at the time of its signing, such as that of sexual slavery. Since South Korea’s turn to democracy in the late 1980s, however, such deals have become inherently contested both inside, as well as outside, of the formal political sphere.
Indeed, the closest parallel to the current deal is the 2015 ‘comfort women deal’ reached by South Korea’s then-President Park Geun-hye and her Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe. This deal involved the establishment of a foundation consisting of JYP 1 billion provided by the Japanese government to support the surviving Korean victims. However, the deal was subsequently overturned by the incoming Moon Jae-in government in 2017, following the so-called ‘candlelight revolution’ — a popular mobilisation against the corruption of the Park administration.
An uncertain future
The current South Korean proposal over forced labour has already been harshly criticised by the opposition, the Democratic Party, as an example of the Yoon government’s “humiliating foreign policy”. A survey has shown that only around 40 per cent of the South Korean public support the proposal, a higher level of opposition than to the 2015 ‘comfort women deal’. For Japan, the figures are the reverse, with 60 per cent of the public holding a positive view of the proposal.
The lesson from the past is that if such deals are not based on genuine reconciliation and expressions of regret, then they are unlikely to be sustainable. It is also likely that unresolved historical issues between the two countries will continue to disrupt bilateral relations. For example, last week’s approval by Tokyo’s Ministry of Education of a new set of school textbooks that downplay Japan’s colonial and wartime past and make renewed claims over the Dokdo (Takeshima) islets claimed by Korea look set to inflame Korean public opinion.
Therefore, attempts to ignore public opinion on such an emotive issue, and, in particular, the voices of the victims, are not only morally questionable in themselves but also unlikely to achieve their broader geostrategic goals. For this reason, the apparent ‘thaw’ of Korea-Japan relations is likely to be a ‘false spring’ rather than a genuine new era of bilateral relations and broader regional cooperation.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Kevin Gray is a Professor in International Relations at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. His research expertise relates to the political economy of East Asian development. He is a co-author (with Jong-Woon Lee) of ‘North Korea and the Geopolitics of Development’ (Cambridge University Press, 2021), as well as the author of ‘Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation’ (Routledge, 2008) and ‘Labour and Development in East Asia: Social Forces and Passive Revolution‘ (Routledge, 2015). Image credit: Wikimedia (cropped).