Relations between South Korea and Japan are so strained that their leaders have not held a one-on-one summit for more than two years, with the major stumbling block being the Japanese leader’s revisionist policy on the wrongdoings committed by his country during its occupation of the peninsula.
So the news that President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe talked on the sidelines of the summit of the Asia-Pacific leaders in Beijing on Monday made headlines in both countries. Park had refused even to have a chat with Abe at previous multilateral meetings.
The Park-Abe talk ― to be exact, a conversation while sitting next to one another at dinner ― may indicate that the two leaders may move to restore their ties. In fact, they agreed, among other things, that the two countries should continue the director-level discussions about the issue of wartime sex slavery.
There is no doubt that relations between the two countries can go back to normal only when Abe stops his efforts to gloss over the Japanese government and military’s responsibility for the so-called “comfort women” issue and other past misdeeds, and refrain from making territorial claims to the Dokdo Islets.
The recent case of Japan denying entry to a Korean singer showed, however, how difficult it would be for Japan to change its attitude regarding its past and its neighbors.
Singer Lee Seung-chul and his entertainment agency believe that the Japanese government banned him from entering Japan on Sunday because he led a choir performance on Dokdo on Aug. 14, one day before the anniversary of Korea’s independence from Japan at the end of World War II.
What’s despicable is that immigration officials who first mentioned “news reports” about his recent activities cited Lee’s 1990 arrest for smoking marijuana when Lee’s entourage protested the entry ban.
The fact is, however, Lee has visited Japan 15 times since 1990. It is simply comical that an official said that “there was no Internet” when Lee asked him why he had not been previously denied entry.
It is a pity that the Japanese authorities made such a lame, cowardly excuse, instead of coming clean. The Japanese Foreign Ministry maintained the same evasive attitude, saying it was not disclosing the reason why it was blocking Lee’s entry in order to protect his “privacy.”
Later, the cabinet minister said that the ban had nothing to do with Dokdo. But he neither gave the reason, nor explained why Lee could visit Japan as many as 15 times before his August performance on Dokdo.
The ban on Lee’s entry, the latest in a string of similar cases, convinces us that the Japanese government keeps a blacklist of celebrities who are engaged in activities involving Dokdo.
In 2012, actor Song Il-gook was denied entry to Japan after he participated in a relay swim to Dokdo. Before that, singer Jeong Gwang-tae, whose song “Dokdo is Our Land” is popular among Koreans, was denied an entry visa in 1996.
In 2011, the K-pop boy bands Beast and CNBLUE were held up by immigration officials at a Tokyo airport for eight hours and had to return to Korea, apparently because tension over the Dokdo issue was running high.
These people are not politicians, and in truth, they play even bigger roles than government officials and politicians in bringing people in the two countries closer, which can help them leave their historical animosities behind.
The Korean boy band TVXQ has set a record by selling the most singles as a foreign artist in Japan ― 4.08 million copies. The record was possible because of the popularity of its newest single, “Time Works Wonders.”
It seems that when it comes to Japan’s recognition of its past and its territorial greed, time does not work any wonders.
