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Last month, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II visited Ireland. She laid a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin to pay tribute to all those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish freedom. The wreath-laying ceremony was another moment of historic reconciliation between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
The queen’s visit was the first of its kind for a British monarch in the 100 years since Ireland’s independence in 1921. Britain had ruled Ireland since the 13th century. The antagonistic relations between the ruler and the ruled had caused bloody conflicts until the two nations signed the Belfast Agreement, an epoch-making political development in the Northern Ireland peace process, in 1998.
It was a well-known fact that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had been one of world’s most notorious terrorist organizations until al-Qaida took the global stage in 2001. An estimated 3,500 people had fallen prey to terrorism by the IRA over 30 years since 1959.
The world is now witnessing the advent of the Asian era, after going through the era of the Atlantic and then that of the Pacific. Korea, China and Japan will be at the center of cooperation and conflicts at the same time in this new era. The future of Asia will depend on whether the three nations move toward cooperation or not, under a trilateral regional framework or on a bilateral basis. Collaboration between the three is totally dependent on how they realize reconciliation over history.
A military alliance is one type of cooperation, enabling its members to overcome many obstacles as its foremost aim is to ensure their survival and co-existence. Therefore, a military alliance is possible only when there are threats of war. However, economic exchange and cooperation can be pushed in the face of conflicts such as the Cold War since this form of collaboration is based on universal human needs for goods and services.
But, cooperation in coordinating economic policies and jointly setting out military and diplomatic policies cannot be achieved without building mutual trust between countries by having better memories or images of each other. This collaboration is possible after making reconciliation over history.
A series of conflicts over history have existed between Korea, China and Japan. They have made diverse efforts for reconciliation. On every Wednesday, former “comfort women” and rights activists stage a rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to call for Japan’s apology for forced sexual slavery during World War II.
Many countries are worried about Japanese politicians’ visit to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where Japanese war criminals were enshrined, every August marking the end of WWII. Whenever the Japanese education ministry approves new school textbooks, Asian neighbors pay attention to their descriptions.
A comprehensive way of solving those conflicts is to write a common history textbook. Respective history textbooks of the three nations contain recognition about each other’s experience in East Asian history beyond descriptions about Japan’s past imperialism. For this reason, the production of a common history book is not a matter of simple descriptions of history, but an issue of complicated politics and international relations.
One of the efforts to resolve history conflicts at government level was a joint history research committee formed between Korea and Japan as well as between China and Japan. Respective government bodies recruited their own scholars and conducted research and discussions jointly with their counterparts of each other country.
The Korea-Japan Joint History Research Committee and the China-Japan Joint History Research Committee concluded their operation without any substantial results. The committees played the limited role of reaffirming historical conflicts of the present rather than taking the lead in making reconciliation.
Europe’s experience reminds us of the importance of political leadership in historical reconciliation. Then-German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt down at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Dec. 7, 1970, during his visit to Poland. A picture showing Brandt on his knees made Poles accept Germany’s apology for wartime atrocities.
In 2008, foreign ministers of both Germany and Poland agreed to publish a joint history textbook. The leadership of then-British Prime Minister John Major and his Irish counterpart Albert Reynolds were behind what was described as historical reconciliation between their two nations. Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Ireland was made possible as Major and Reynolds signed the Downing Street Declaration in 1993 to overcome the legacy of a history fraught with bloodshed.
Reconciliation is indispensible in reducing uncertainties and moving toward cooperation and harmony in Asia. What East Asia needs most is political leadership that may revive the Joint History Research Committee not to reconfirm conflicts but to initiate reconciliation.
Choi Woon-do is a research fellow at the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seoul. He can be reached at wdchoi@nahf.or.kr.
