Japanese foreign minister's lame excuse

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, right, and her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono part their ways at a meeting. /Yonhap

By Oh Young-jin

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono's view on the ongoing dispute with Korea is disappointing because his view lacks universal respect for basic human rights and is worrisome because it may recommit Japan to its past mistakes.

The Kono claim, recently posted on Bloomberg news agency, provides grounds for reflection regarding what is the best way to prevent an aggressor country from waging war again: the Treaty of Versailles or the San Francisco Treaty.

First, Kono's contribution portrays Korea as untrustworthy because it is demanding compensation for Japan's colonial occupation from near the turn of the 20th century to 1945, saying the issue was settled once and for all by the 1965 treaty, under which Japan gave Korea $500 million ― more than Korea's annual budget then.

Kono sounds transactional, as if he thinks what his country did to Korea was a mere fender bender that he can write a check for and forget all about. But he is wrong. Japan systematically deprived Korea of all it had and all it could have had for 36 years.

It involved hundreds of thousands of Koreans mobilized to make planes and ships to fight Allied forces and mine coal and minerals to keep the war machine going. It involved the kidnapping of countless young women and girls to serve at Japanese army brothels. It involved the forced adaptation of Japanese names. All this has left a legacy that Korea is still struggling to grapple with: pitting Koreans against each other over different interpretations of history during Japanese rule and afterwards.

Japan's occupation is responsible for the division of Korea into North and South. The 38th parallel was drawn as a demarcation line to enable the U.S. and the Soviet Union to divide the work of disarming the vanquished Japanese soldiers in Korea. One Korea could have spared Koreans a lot of trouble they are now suffering.

Kono takes issue with Korea's Supreme Court ruling that opens the way for Korean forced laborers to seek damages directly from their former Japanese employers. This is not a violation of the 1965 compensation pact as Japan claims but an affirmation of the workers' human rights as the court ruled.

If Tokyo had commiserated over the twisted lives of Korean victims as a result of its past misdeeds and sought to find a solution with Seoul, the situation would not have been pushed into the cul de sac we are in now. An old saying goes that one who ties it up should get it untied. Japan is the one that tied it up.

Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono

Kono's claim that Japan's export restrictions on key items ― some of which are pivotal to Korean manufacturers ― have nothing to do with Korea's top court ruling, sounds fanciful to say the least.

He asserted that it was not a "retaliatory" measure, arguing that Japan kicked Korea out because it didn't consult Japan, as required to remain on Tokyo's list of preferred trade partners entitled to case-by-case review exemptions. Besides the timing of Japan's action, it simply does not make sense that Korea risked disruptions in the production of key export items ― such as semiconductors and displays ― by skipping the consultations.

Then, Kono cited reasons of national security for yanking Korea off its so-called "whitelist" but didn't reveal what they were.

The Japanese foreign minister's logic, and by extension that of anti-Korean Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government, gets shredded when Kono called on Korea to return to the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) ― a bilateral military intelligence-sharing pact.

In one breath, Kono said he doesn't trust Korea and Korea poses a security concern to Japan. In another, he beseeched Korea to come back to GSOMIA, representing the highest form of trust.

Finally, the Kono opinion piece calls on us to look back on the 1952 San Francisco Treaty that served as a peace accord, under which the victorious Allies stipulated Japan's obligations in compensation, among other things. In general, the treaty is lenient to the defeated Japan. It reflected that the Versailles Treaty was too harsh on Germany at the end of the First World War, leading to the rise of the Nazis and the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe.

In light of Japan's recent behavior, the San Francisco pact marks an overcorrection to Versailles, enabling Japan to avoid due reflection on its crimes against humanity and become as assertive again as it was.

It is of course that there shouldn't be any more wars or necessity for adopting war-ending treaties like San Francisco and Versailles. God forbid! If there is a war, we should better bear in mind the shortcomings of the two peacemaking treaties.

But more immediately and realistically, when we combine Japan's newly found assertiveness and Abe's effort to get Japan off its pacifist constitution with the U.S. initiative to deputize Japan in its fight against China, the picture is not pretty: a remilitarized Japan, backed by the U.S., battling the hegemonic China.

Isn't that reason enough to stand up and tell Japan to stop whitewashing its shameful history, repent its misdeeds and stop its shenanigans? If the Kono claim serves any purpose, it brings Abe's ill-placed ambitions into sharper relief. We thank the foreign minister for reminding us. It may be our Chamberlain moment.

Oh Young-jin (foolsdie@gmail.com, foolsdie5@koreatimes.co.kr) is the digital managing editor of The Korea Times.