Moon's rush for breakthrough with Japan raises questions

President Moon Jae-in speaks by phone with new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Sept. 24 at Cheong Wa Dae. / Courtesy of Cheong Wa Dae

By Do Je-hae

President Moon Jae-in's rush to resolute serious issues with Japan before the Tokyo Olympic Games is not going as well as Cheong Wa Dae had hoped.

Moon named former four-term ruling party lawmaker Kang Chang-il as the next ambassador to Japan last month. It was the first time he had named a politician to the post, after first appointing Lee Su-hoon, an international relations professor, and then Nam Kwan-pyo, a career diplomat and one of the foremost experts on Japan at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Nam has served as the Korean ambassador to Japan since May 2019. It is considered rare for the envoy to Japan to be replaced less than two years after being appointed. Cheong Wa Dae said that sending a politician to the post has a particular meaning amid the deadlock in bilateral relations.
"With the launch of the new Cabinet in Japan, it reflects the President's determination to find a resolution to the problems in bilateral relations," a senior presidential aide said. "Kang served as head of the Korea-Japan Parliamentarians' Union and has built an extensive network in Japan. Based on this, we determined it would be more suitable to send a politician rather than a career diplomat."

The lawmaker is known to be fluent in Japanese and has close ties with some of the most influential figures in Japanese politics.

Earlier this week, Cheong Wa Dae had to deny local media reports that hinted at Tokyo's discontent with Kang as a nominee for the post, given his previous remark on the Japanese emperor and other issues sensitive to Tokyo.

"The reports that an official from the presidential national security office (NSO) met with an official from the Japanese Embassy in Korea at Cheong Wa Dae to discuss some issues of mutual concern are not true," presidential spokesperson Kang Min-seok said.

The NSO official reportedly sought cooperation on Kang's "agrement," a diplomatic term meaning approval from the host country to receive members of the diplomatic mission from a foreign country.

Some Japanese media outlets have also reportedly been critical of Kang, expressing doubt about his ability to bridge the gap in the two countries' relationship, said to be the worst since the establishment of bilateral relations in 1965. Kang, in fact, visited Japan last August at the height of the two countries' trade conflict, but returned without much to show for it.

Aside from naming a new ambassador, Seoul has been eager to improve relations with Japan before the Tokyo Olympics next year, sending National Intelligence Service chief Park Jie-won for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

But the effectiveness of such efforts remains to be seen. Some critics and the opposition say the primary motivation for the strenuous efforts from Seoul is to get Japan's support for inter-Korean relations before the Games rather than improving bilateral relations with Japan itself.

Moon has expressed his wish on several occasions to use the Tokyo Games as a platform to renew diplomacy with North Korea.

"One major factor in the Moon administration's renewed push to improve relations with Japan is the possibility that doing so will allow the Tokyo Olympics to serve as a potential showplace for a breakthrough with North Korea," Mason Richey, associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, told The Korea Times.

But no matter what Seoul does, concerns are rising that it will be difficult to significantly change the climate in Tokyo unless there is some progress in the deadlock on the issue of wartime forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea. Japan wants Seoul to stop the court-ordered liquidation of seized assets of Japanese firms that have refused to comply with the 2018 Supreme Court ruling to compensate the Korean plaintiffs.

"Japan may be skeptical of Seoul's good faith regarding overtures to improved relations, especially if there is no movement on the forced labor issue," Richey said.

Analysts say Japan has some reasons to take Moon's efforts for improving ties seriously, particularly under the incoming Biden administration, which wants closer trilateral cooperation.

"Clearly Suga is more pragmatic and less ideological than Shinzo Abe," Ramon Pacheco Pardo, KF-VUB Korea Chair, Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, told The Korea Times. "And his family is not closely connected to Japan's imperial past as Abe's was. I think that this will probably lead him to try to strengthen cooperation with South Korea.

"After all, Japan is regularly criticized internationally for its unwillingness to properly address the labor and sex slave issues. And Japan will need South Korea's cooperation in forums such as the G7, the Quad Plus or the WTO if it wants to pursue its foreign policy goals related to China or trade.

"I also think that the Biden administration will quietly ask South Korea and Japan to improve their working relationship. So the incentives for Tokyo to improve relations with Seoul are clear, even if the underlying labor and sex slave issue remains unresolved."

Richey said: "One reason why Suga and his advisers may be relatively open to Seoul's gambit is that the incoming Biden administration is likely to be more engaged in encouraging South Korea and Japan to improve relations as a part of the new administration's efforts to rebuild American alliance relationships.

Pardo, an associate professor in international relations at King's College London, says Moon's efforts to improve ties with Japan should not be viewed entirely from the prospective of pushing its North Korea policy.

"In my view, the Moon government wants to improve relations with Japan both for the sake of bilateral cooperation itself and for the sake of finding a way to restart relations with North Korea," Pardo said.

"If we look at the behavior of the Moon government since the decision by the Supreme Court, it has tried to find avenues for cooperation. Thus, bilateral dialogues on a wide range of issues have continued, and the two countries have signed the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) while South Korea is now considering joining the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership).

"All this clearly suggests that Moon wants to shore up relations with Japan for the sake of it, since these decisions have little to do with North Korea. But the Moon government is also suggesting that Japan should invite Kim Jong-un or high-ranked North Korean officials to attend the Tokyo Olympics. And it has also suggested that there could be a summit including North Korea during the Olympics.

"I think that Japan would not do any of these out of its own volition, since obviously its focus will be on hosting the Olympics successfully and receiving all the heads of state and government that will be traveling to Tokyo. Thus, it makes sense for the Moon government to try to shore up relations with Japan also with a view at pushing its North Korean policy. After all, Moon already successfully used sports diplomacy during the PyeongChang Olympics."