Editor’s Note: Abe Shinzo, the former Japanese Prime Minister, was assassinated on July 8 during a campaign speech in the western city of Nara.
Jhe steals the time between Seoul and Tokyo is just under two hours. Yet the last time a leader from South Korea or Japan paid a state visit to the other was in 2011, when Lee Myung-bak, then South Korea’s president, was went to see Noda Yoshihiko, the Japanese Prime Minister at the time. Mr Lee hailed Mr Noda’s recent goodwill gesture of returning some 1,205 royal pounds, which Japan had stolen from South Korea during colonial times. Mr. Noda hosted an intimate dinner in Kyoto in honor of Mr. Lee’s 70th birthday and 41st wedding anniversary. The two leaders expressed their desire to build a “forward-looking relationship” between their countries.
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Along with China, Japan and South Korea are the economic powers of East Asia. Unlike their giant neighbor, they are established democracies and staunch allies of America. They are also wary of China’s growing influence in the region, not to mention the threat of a belligerent North Korea. But despite their common contemporary interests, the past divides them. During the same summit, Mr. Lee and Mr. Noda clashed over the issue of “comfort women”, as Koreans and others forced into brothels for the benefit of Japanese soldiers during World War II were called euphemistically (a memorial to women is pictured). Good will quickly turned into renewed bad faith. A mixture of historic grievances and new disputes has continued to plague relations for a decade.
The issues stem from conflicting memories of the Japanese colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945 and the suffering it inflicted on Koreans. It seemed for a brief moment in 2015 that the two might be starting to put the past behind them. That year, Japan’s Abe Shinzo and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye, the country’s leaders at the time, reached a “final and irreversible” agreement on the issue of comfort women. Mr. Abe issued a formal apology. His government donated 1 billion yen ($7.4 million) to a foundation to compensate the victims.
Ms Park’s successor, Moon Jae-in, criticized the deal from its inception. In 2018, a year after his election, he ordered the foundation to be dissolved. That year, the country’s Supreme Court twice upheld rulings ordering Japanese companies to compensate South Koreans forced to work in their factories to support the Japanese war effort. Japan, which considers these claims to be settled by a treaty signed in 1965, was appalled. The decision created a formal legal barrier to rapprochement. But attitudes on both sides have also hardened.
A window of opportunity to improve relationships may now open, if only briefly. Mr. Moon completed his term in May. His successor, Yoon Suk-yeol, renewed the call for “future-oriented” ties with Japan. Kishida Fumio, Prime Minister of Japan, faces upper house elections on July 10, as his Liberal Democratic Party (pdl) is on the way to winning. He will then have up to three years before the next national election. The two leaders stressed the importance of working together in an increasingly difficult regional environment.
Since Mr. Yoon took office, ties between the countries have started to recover. He signaled his intention to patch things up by sending a delegation to Tokyo in April. On June 29, US, Japanese and South Korean leaders met to discuss security on the sidelines of a nato summit for the first time in almost five years. On July 4, the big business associations of the two countries held their first meeting in three years. They urged their political leaders to hasten to mend relations.
It depends first on the resolution of the forced labor dispute. A South Korean court has approved the seizure of assets belonging to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel, Japanese industrial giants that used forced labor during World War II. The appeals have delayed the process, but the assets, which include South Korean patents and earnings, can be liquidated and the profits given to the victims (or, in most cases, their surviving relatives). On July 4, Mr. Yoon’s government launched a council to develop a plan to avoid this irreversible step.
Everything will depend on Mr. Yoon’s ability to keep the public and the opposition on his side. Any perception that he is making all the donation and Mr. Kishida all the profit will enrage voters. “We can’t tango alone,” said Shin Kak-soo, former South Korean ambassador to Japan.
Many Japanese politicians believe that teams play tennis, not dance together. “It’s very clear the ball is in Korea’s court, they have to fix it,” says one pdl legislator. Mr Kishida, who as foreign minister in 2015 led the negotiations on the ill-fated comfort women deal, is himself hesitant. He also has to manage the nationalist wing of his party, which can be deaf to hearing about historical issues. Yet he can still be persuaded to take two steps. Japanese diplomats recognize the strategic folly of continuing to feud with South Korea.
Avoiding liquidation will require careful choreography and mutual trust, which is lacking. If efforts fail, relations will surely deteriorate further. Military cooperation between America, Japan and South Korea could stagnate. Trade restrictions could multiply. China and North Korea would surely welcome it.
Shared strategic interests should, in theory, create a “lower limit” to how bad relationships can deteriorate, says Sohn Yul of the East Asia Institute, a think tank in Seoul. North Korea’s recent barrage of missile launches and the specter of a nuclear test provide a strong incentive for Japan and South Korea to work together. So far, America has only sought to bring its two allies to the table, but it could try to wring its arm more actively as the spat threatens to disrupt its efforts to rally allies from the region against China.
The rewards for improving relationships are great. A successful resolution of the court case could engender closer cooperation not only on security, but on a wider range of issues, such as supply chain resilience. A more coordinated economic opening to Southeast Asia would help counter China’s influence in the region. Yet the countries’ troubled history also imposes “an upper limit” on how good relations can be established, Mr Sohn says. Without facing the past, Japan and South Korea will find it difficult to face the future together. ■
