It was sad to see U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe in Washington last week sashaying into a banquet wearing tuxedoes, alongside gracefully dressed first ladies. It was almost like a kid watching his best friend enter a party with the school bully.
As melodramatic as it sounds, the resentment that prevailed South Korea during the eight-day-long Abe visit to the U.S. was very real.
It was not about feeling left out. It was more about feeling let down, but not because the U.S. did not univocally side with Korea in demanding a more clear-cut apology from Japan for its atrocities. Few had expected that. It was because, perhaps unconsciously, there was a sense of hope that justice might just win out over diplomatic gains.
This was out of naivety for sure, as when it comes to diplomacy, national interest is all that matters.
For the U.S., Japan is its “cornerstone” for the region, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is at the core of Obama’s rebalancing policy for the Asia-Pacific. Their shared sense of threat from China’s rise is translated into revised guidelines that broaden Tokyo’s security role.
For Japan, the U.S. is its ride-or-die ally as it strives to become a normal state and rise from its economic recession. Through historical revisionism, it is seeking to be reborn as a proud state by evolving beyond its status as a war-renouncing country with limited defense capabilities against the threats of North Korea and China.
To Washington, therefore, Korea was being emotional, and even irrational, by incessantly prodding it to mediate for an apology from Japan. The claim that the U.S. shares the responsibility ― citing the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty drafted by the U.S. that ended WWII in the Pacific, with no mention of Dokdo ― is just uncomfortable.
In that sense, Obama and Abe did an excellent job last week by tacitly jumping over the glaring critiques and successfully upgrading their countries’ alliance.
A question posed by a Korean-American student to Abe during a speech at Harvard University was widely covered by the media here, as they hailed him for boldly demanding the prime minister state his position on the issue of the “comfort women” ― the Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese military ― which Japan claims was resolved with an agreement in 1965.
But at the end of the day, Abe, fully ready for such an impromptu situation, calmly countered with a response that Japan paid $22 million this year for fighting sexual violence, effectively reinforcing Japan’s depiction of the sexual slavery as human trafficking.
An outpouring of Korean news reports nitpicking Abe’s every statement appeared only to add weight to his wits.
For the U.S., maintaining a polite distance from the Korea-Japan feud seems wise, as Washington investing political capital into the matter could impair its alliance with Tokyo, while a lack thereof has little grounds for protest on the part of Korea.
One after another, members of the Obama administration were seen urging Korea to move forward. Evan Medeiros, senior director for Asian affairs at the White House’s National Security Council, for instance, said, “We think that the more countries in the region (that) can take that kind of constructive approach and let history be history, but be mindful of it, the better off the region will be in terms of its ability to cooperation.” (Some of the Korean media have now joined in, criticizing the government for being bound by history, just a week after criticizing it for failing to influence Abe’s U.S. speeches.)
But to Korea, Japan’s double standard on its atrocities is very much an ongoing issue, in order for history to be history.
As U.S. expert Scott Snyder from the Council of Foreign Relations was quoted by a Korean newspaper as saying, the history between Korea and Japan is a matter of national identity and goes beyond the issue of gains or losses.
Victims from the Japanese sexual enslavement are still alive, while Japan continues to provoke Korea with regular revisions to its history textbooks, with increasingly indiscernible acknowledgement of its atrocities and fortified claim over the Dokdo islets. Just as any country would find it, it impossible for Korea to watch on the sidelines as facts are whitewashed by a past abuser.
Just as the U.S. explains that it has no discretion to take sides between Korea and Japan, it should be equally inappropriate for Washington to urge Seoul to let bygones be bygones.
For Korea, that is why much of the public frustration is also directed at the government, which goes out of its way to speak on behalf of the U.S., downplaying public calls by saying “foreign affairs is much more complicated than that,” instead of challenging Abe’s well-timed diplomatic choreography with equal intricacy.
The public is also exposed to a series of perceived Japanese diplomatic feats, such as an anticipated listing of its major wartime industrial facilities as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
President Park Geun-hye’s remarks Monday encouraging her foreign affairs team to hold on to its convictions also seemed to fall on deaf ears, as the public remains out of the loop over what is actually being done. On self-reflection, the media also lends a major hand to the political brouhaha, eventually jumping on the bandwagon of a self-devouring ideological brawl on every security issue that is raised.
Caught between escalating regional rivalries, and with no development in inter-Korean relations for two consecutive administrations, it must be remembered that, in the end, we have no one else but ourselves to blame. That is why Foreign Ministry officials’ objections to charges of “failed diplomacy” ― instead insisting that Korea is being courted by regional powers ― remains unpersuasive, if not downright frightening.
U.S. friends, including Obama last year, say that the Korea-U.S. alliance remains “as strong as ever.”
There is no question that the alliance with the U.S. continues to be the most crucial for Korea’s security stability. But that does not mean we should sugarcoat it. We owe that much to our next generation.
By Lee Joo-hee
Lee Joo-hee is the national desk editor of The Korea Herald. She can be reached at jhl@heraldcorp.com. ― Ed.
