As everyone prays that MERS will go away soon without claiming many lives, the outbreak awoke us to the many varieties of social maladies that we have tended to ignore in a premature complacency over our achievements.
All major actors ― administration leaders, politicians, the media and professionals ― should come forward to cure society’s ills in all areas. The mode of politics should change first to ameliorate the disputes and conflicts between parties, between the ruling party and the Blue House and between the right and the left. The next thing to aim for is a change in our diplomatic behaviour.
Complaints of “Korea fatigue” are heard across the Pacific from our closest ally, the United States. It is about the unending calls from Seoul for an official apology from Japan over its World War II atrocities, now focused on the issue of “comfort women” from Korea and other places it occupied to serve as sex slaves for soldiers.
The U.S. Congress has adopted a resolution condemning the wartime inhumanity of abusing women and the U.N. Human Rights Council has released a report on this subject. Memorial statues dedicated to the “comfort women” have been erected in New Jersey and California and many U.S. leaders have individually expressed compassion for the dead and surviving victims. Yet, stateside reports reveal dwindling interest at a time of growing amity between the U.S. and Japan against a rising China.
Since the Asahi Shimbun retracted several articles on “comfort women” published in the 1990s on the basis of Seiji Yoshida’s “memoirs,” which were found to be fabricated, Japanese conservatives have taken the offensive to deny government and military involvement in the sex slavery in their general smear campaign against Korea. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would not only insist on the “human trafficking” version, but has also threatened to revise the 1993 Yohei Kono statement admitting the “direct and indirect role” of the imperial military in the inhumane business.
As long as they are in power, the present Japanese leadership will not apologize for the wartime sex slavery because they believe they need not do so. An apology is made when the party that did harm to the other party genuinely feels remorse for its action or when the former anticipates punishment by the latter or a powerful third party. There is no effective system of third party intervention in international society and the conservative Japanese from Abe on down have proved morally incapable of admitting to their country’s historical wrongdoings.
I would suggest that President Park Geun-hye declares, say, on Aug. 15, the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII ― with Japan’s unconditional surrender and Korea’s liberation from 35 years of colonial rule ― that her government would stop asking for an apology for the sex slavery or compensation for the individual victims. The “forgive-but-not-forget” principle will let us maintain the higher moral ground in future relations with Japan and add the image of international largesse as we join the common pursuit of peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia.
In March 1993, immediately after his inauguration, President Kim Young-sam announced that Korea would not demand Japan’s material compensation for the “comfort women” and the government would thereafter support those unfortunate women with state funds. He said Korea would then be able to approach establishing a new Korea-Japan relationship from the position of moral supremacy.
This led to the “Kono Statement” by the then chief cabinet secretary under Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, which said: “The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military. The government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative and military personnel directly took part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere.”
There is little to add to this admission of state responsibility for the recruitment of Korean women through coercion and to the misery of military those kept in brothels. The Seiji Yoshida incident and a recent assertion that the Kono Statement was a product of diplomatic consultation with Korea could help in the conservative Japanese efforts to discount its significance. Yet, no maneuvering can save them from international condemnation for the past crime against humanity.
A prominent Korea watcher from the U.S. has recently mentioned a “grand bargain” between Korea and Japan over the perennial issues existing between them. Scott A. Snyder on the Council on Foreign Relations must himself have felt some Korea fatigue as he suggested that Korea refrain from raising the issue of past history in exchange for Japan’s silence on the Dokdo Islets (known in Japan as Takeshima) in order to make a new start in partnership. That’s not a bad idea if only Shinzo Abe has a clear vision of regional cooperation and the guts to withstand conservative repercussions.
Over the past 22 years since the Kono Statement, five successive presidents in Korea and 15 prime ministers in Japan have engaged in roller-coaster diplomacy over the Dokdo Islets and past history issues while the two neighboring countries were maintaining a triangular alliance along with the U.S. An extreme example was President Lee Myung-bak who visited Japan seven times during his five years in office and received five Japanese prime ministers, each making one or two visits here in a smooth progress of “shuttle diplomacy.” It suddenly crashed when he landed on the Dokdo Islets, to become the first Korean president to do so, near the end of his tenure.
President Park has spent nearly half of her tenure without having a meaningful dialogue with the head of Japanese government. The long absence of top-level communication across the Korea Strait hurts both sides when Seoul has to struggle with the hardest diplomatic conundrum in the 21st century and deal with the four powers surrounding it.
The MERS crisis pushed Koreans to face a stark reality they had hardly imagined and helped them realize what is needed for the survival and progress of the nation. We are seeing the futility and worthlessness of internal partisan politics and are questioning ourselves over what we are getting from the drawn-out wrangling with Japan. An apology doesn’t nourish you, and a fake one is only harmful.
By Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. ― Ed.
