This is the first in a series of articles highlighting Japan’s wartime crimes and their impact on Seoul-Tokyo relations as well as on East Asia.—ED.
By Kang Hyun-kyung
The trauma of enforced sex slavery during World War II has remained unhealed in South Korea as Japan has persistently rejected calls to offer a heart-felt apology to victims of the wartime crime.
Rather, the pain was exacerbated recently as Japanese right-wing politicians played the nationalism card by denying the Japanese government’s involvement in war-time sex slavery ahead of the October elections, provoking fury in South Korea.
The unfinished business between the two countries has posed a fresh challenge to the United States as its two allies’ deteriorated relations are poised to hurt its interests in East Asia.
Daniel Pinkston, deputy project director of the North East Asia Program of the International Crisis Group, said taking one side or the other in this particular issue is not in U.S. interests.
“I don’t expect the U.S. government to play a significant role in that (referring to mounting tensions between Seoul and Tokyo over historical issues),” he said. “When Seoul or Tokyo come to the U.S. and pressure Washington to take side on that issue, I think it’s not in the U.S. interests to do so.”
Pinkston said Seoul-Tokyo tensions are bad for Washington. Despite this, he assured that the U.S. government will not become involved in the diplomatic row.
Washington’s non-intervention policy, however, is poised to be tested because the flare-up of tensions between its key East Asian allies at this critical time will undoubtedly do disservice to its long-term interest in the region.
The U.S. government plans to have a stronger presence in East Asia, while cutting the number of troops stationed in other areas.
Some defense analysts speculate a U.S.-led trilateral defense partnership involving South Korea and Japan is aimed at encircling China and countering North Korea. If the two key allies keep fighting, the strained relationships will be a stumbling block to Washington’s East Asia strategy.
This became a reality when Seoul failed to finalize the domestic process to approve a military pact with Japan in June. Koreans harboring historical animosity was the key driving force to the suspension of the treaty to share military intelligence.
Foreign ministry officials, including Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, say that right-wingers gained the upper hand in Japanese politics earlier this year and predict that hardliners will continue to dominate foreign policy there even after the October elections.
If this turns out to be true, it is inevitable that Seoul and Tokyo will continue to clash over unsettled issues.
Coupled with the significant change in distribution of power in the region over the past six decades, the murky prospects for South Korea-Japan relations may prod Washington to question if it can benefit from a do-nothing policy.
The root cause of the frequent flare-up of Seoul-Tokyo tensions is a sharp perception gap between the two neighbors about Japan’s reparations for the victims of wartime crimes.
South Korea views Japan’s compensation as unfinished business, whereas Japan thinks that it fulfilled its obligations and the matter is settled.
The differences in the responses of Japan and Germany over wartime crimes have caused Koreans to believe that Japan needs to atone further.
Ian Buruma, author of the book “The Wages of Guilt” (1994) said Germany took responsible measures for wartime atrocities by the Nazi regime and has educated future generations about the history of that era in schools.
Germany also offered a sincere apology to various European nations and Israel.
What Germany did to wartime victims stood in stark contrast with that of Japan in the post-war period, Buruma observes in his book.
Japan has refused to take responsibility and is yet to make a sincere apology for the atrocities, claiming reparations for wartime victims such as forced laborers and sex slaves have been made.
In the essay report “Researching Japanese War Crimes Records,” historian Edward Drea said the Cold War confrontation between the U.S.-led West and former Soviet Union-led communist bloc could be one reason why Japan could have avoided being held fully accountable for its wartime crimes.
“The rise of concern about Japanese war crimes in the late 1990s reinforced the notion that most Japanese war criminals escaped punishment, either because the U.S. government needed their cooperation against the Soviet Union during the early days of the Cold War, or to appease current Japanese economic and commercial interests,” he observed.
Unless there is a dramatic change in Japan’s position on its wartime crimes, historical animosity will be intensified and the fight between the two U.S. allies could come someday come at the cost of America’s interests in East Asia.