Issue Brief No. 1
Korea-Japan Rapprochement: Can the Future Overcome the Past?
by
Mirash Cherian Kurian*
After 12 years, Japan and South Korea restarted their diplomatic ties through negotiations and mutual understanding. There are an immense opportunities for both countries through this alignment, but also there are several political and historical hindrances. Will both nations be able to mend relations for a hopeful future or will the past become a reason to strain the relationship.
After a hiatus of twelve years, the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida traveled to Seoul during the first week of May to have a Summit with the South Korean President Yoon. The meeting brought about a new momentum in the relationship between Seoul and Tokyo, which has been estranged for a decade because of the conflict over history between the two countries. A key driver for the change was the political change in Korea last summer with the victory of the conservative Presidential candidate Yoon, who has been pushing the agenda of improving relations with Japan.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
After the summit between Japan and South Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a statement that his “heart aches” when he thinks of countless people who have gone through challenging and sad times in extreme situations during Japanese colonial rule in Korea. The statement by the Prime Minister, though was personal, could be seen as an act to save the face of the Yoon administration, who went the extra mile to improve relations with Japan despite widespread disapproval. Fumio Kishida reached Seoul as a reply visit as South Korean President Yoon paid a visit to Japan early this year, which also has a significance as a South Korean President made a state visit to Tokyo after a 12-year gap.
Despite Prime Minister Kishida’s personal reference to Japanese colonialism in Korea, the absence of an official apology stirred protest in Korea by the opposition and relatives of the victims of Japan’s colonialism. Even if South Korea will benefit in several ways by placating the conflicts with Japan, the Yoon administration cannot evade the unrest this alignment is going to cause in the domestic sphere of Korean politics. At the heart of the protracted conflict between the two countries is the legacies of the Japanese colonialism in Korea. The Korean Peninsula was annexed by Japan in 1910 and it remained as a colony until the defeat of Japan in the Second World War. During the period of occupations, Korean people were dragged into forced labor and women were forced into prostitution to become ‘comfort women’ for the Japanese Army.
The history of Japanese colonialism became a contentious issue between the two countries, particularly after the democratization of Korea in 1987. Since then, progressive political forces and civil society organizations in Korea have been demanding justice for the victims of Japanese colonialism. According to the Japanese government, all the issues pertaining to the colonial period were addressed when Tokyo normalized their relations in 1964. However, the progressive political dispensation view that the diplomatic agreement didn’t take the victims’ account into perspective hence, not addressing the issue properly. They also blame the past Korean military administrations and their current conservative descendants for not doing enough to make Japan address the issue squarely. They also see that the Japanese state’s apologies were not sincere enough given the revisionist tendencies in Japan.
The historical conflict between the two countries took a much more detrimental turn with the Korean courts in 2018 delivering a verdict asking Japanese companies who were involved in Korea during the colonial period to pay reparations to the victims of forced labor. For the last five years, since the verdict, relations between Seoul and Tokyo have nose-dived to the extent of imposing back-to-back economic sanctions and severing security relations, which has not happened in the past, despite persisting diplomatic quarrel. The history of Japanese colonialism in Korea is a very sensitive matter. A development in Japan that was in any way related to Japan’s colonial past became a diplomatic controversy. For instance, in 2022, when the Japanese government approached UNESCO to include the Sado mine in the list of world heritage status, led to a public and diplomatic outburst from Korea. The Sado gold mines played a prominent role in the development of the Japanese economy but relied on forced Korean labor.
President Yoon has completed one year in his office and has received mixed reviews on handling foreign affairs. The Yoon administration in its foreign policy has been emphasizing strengthening relations with the US and Japan, a hardline position on North Korea, and revisiting Korea’s relations with China. The administration has emphasized value-based foreign policy and has been closely aligned with the West. President Yoon’s outreach to Tokyo has been part and parcel of Korea’s diplomatic adjustment to accommodate the geopolitical realignment that has been underway in East Asia following the US-China strategic competition, the War in Ukraine, and the intensification of security threats from North Korea. It is in that context that the Yoon government to break that stalemate with Japan has taken the decision to encourage Korean companies to contribute to a fund to give reparation to the victims of forced labor.
President Yoon’s effort though offered momentum to improve Japan-Korea relations, the way ahead is not without challenges. As demonstrated by the protests in the aftermath of Prime Minister Kishida’s “Heart Ache” remark, a major section of the Korean people are not convinced by the administration’s move. It is also reflective of growing public disapproval of President Yoon and his style of ‘just trust me and follow’ decision-making with no attempt to engage with the public. The geopolitical situation would clearly offer some legitimacy for President Yoon’s move for the time being. However, the question is to what extent Korean society is ready to see Japan through the lens of the ‘future’ than the ‘past’. Given that Japan continues to remain the significant other in defining Korean national identity and the polarized nature of Korean politics, it is too early to say that the current opening is the beginning of a sustainable phase in Korean-Japanese relations which is free of conflict on historical issues.
* Mirash Cherian Kurian is a Research Associate with the Korea Centre, SIRP, MG University. Views are personal.