Abe's charm offensive fails to work

President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands during a trilateral summit with President Barack Obama at the U.S. embassy in The Hague, Tuesday. / Yonhap

By Kim Tae-gyu

THE HAGUE ― Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s charm offensive obviously failed to win over President Park Geun-hye.

In a trilateral summit, mediated by U.S. President Barack Obama, the two met for the first time as heads of state.

Abe tried to greet Park in Korean but this was received coldly.

Park has warned Abe on his nationalistic misbehavior but he didn’t heed this with a series of provocative acts.

Her aides, however, tried to downplay the discord that is by some accounts turning personal from Park’s perspective, saying that the summit achieved its intended goal of confirming a united front on North Korea. The unwritten goal was saving Obama’s face since without his intervention, Park would not have attended.

Experts do not predict any bilateral summit between the two anytime soon.

“Thorny issues were not discussed at all. They just talked about North Korea’s nuclear threats, one of the few areas where Seoul and Tokyo do not disagree,” said Paik Hak-soon at the Sejong Institute in Seoul.

“I don’t think that the one-off trilateral summit will play a big role in normalizing relations between the two estranged neighbors.”

Lee Kang-yun concurred that the 40-minute talks were nothing more than an event in which Park reluctantly took part due to pressure from Washington.

“I do not see great changes after the encounter. There still remain so many potential stumbling blocks to hurt the bilateral relationship,” Lee said. “For one, what if Japan comes up with history textbooks claiming Dokdo? What if Abe pays a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine during the April festival? Things will instantly get worse.”

The Japanese government is scheduled to announce new history textbooks in April and the chances are they will assert sovereignty over Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo, a major bone of contention.

Park’s secretary for foreign affairs Kim Hyoung-zhin rebuffed such a negative view on the grounds that the meeting was designed to focus on North Korea policies from the very beginning.

Foreign ministry officials also express their optimism because Seoul and Tokyo plan to have working-level talks next month on Japan’s sexual enslavement of Korean women, euphemistically called “comfort women,” during World War II.

Along with Dokdo, Abe’s stance of not clearly admitting to and apologizing for the sex slaves has caused relations between Seoul and Tokyo to reach their lowest ebb in years.

Koreans’ antagonism to Abe, who was found to be less popular than North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in a recent survey in Korea, increased following his controversial visit late last year to the Yasukuni Shrine, which houses the remains of 14 Class-A war criminals, further straining already-frayed bilateral ties.

Earlier this month, Abe showed some signs of change by promising to honor two statements made by his predecessors in 1993 and 1995 that offered contrition for past misdeeds.

However, Park is seemingly not ready to embrace her controversial Japanese counterpart after the trilateral summit, the fifth one in history, where she half-heartedly participated.

During the 40-minute talks, she hardly made eye contact with Abe and maintained a grim face when he made remarks.

“What really matters is Park’s attitude. She appears to have not encouraged her officials to actively seek ways to improve relations with Tokyo. Things are not likely to change unless the island nation shifts its policies in a dramatic fashion,” Paik said.

Meanwhile, Abe who had repeatedly asked for a summit with Park after he returned to power in late 2012 demonstrated his strong hope to improve ties with Seoul.

“Japan and South Korea have common challenges, and we will continue to have communication at various levels,” Abe told AFP after the talks. “Today was the first step to building future oriented relations between Japan and South Korea.”

But pundits still remain cautious.

Against this backdrop, professor Jo Yang-hyeon from the Korea National Diplomatic Academy said that Washington’s role as a mediator is more important than ever.