hankyoreh

June 22. (Blue House photo pool)

With the leaders of South Korea and Japan attending parallel ceremonies and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se making his first visit to Japan, the two countries seem poised to capture momentum created by the 50th anniversary of the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties and improve bilateral relations.

Experts say that, in order to ensure sustainable improvement of its relations with Japan, South Korea will need to lead the way toward a long-term, strategic position instead of overreacting each time that Japan takes provocative action about historical issues. In other words, South Korea needs to employ a mature foreign policy that pursues the national interest even while making reasonable demands about Japan’s retrogressive stance on historical issues.

While the two leaders attending parallel ceremonies marks a shift in the two countries’ stance toward their bilateral relations, experts think that conflict and discord about historical issues could continue to plague them. In particular, it is widely expected that the statement that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will make this coming August to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II will not address the four elements that South Korea has requested - namely, war of aggression, colonial rule, remorse, and apology. There is always the possibility that bilateral diplomacy could grind to another halt.

In such a situation, experts argue that the South Korean government needs to resist the temptation to adopt reactionary measures such as basically shutting down high-level diplomatic channels, as it has in the past.

"A single statement with stronger wording would be enough to end this and we wouldn‘t need any more apologies, but that’s unlikely to happen. If relations between the two countries are truly important, we need to keep talking about these issues even if it takes time,” said Rep. Kim Jong-hun, a lawmaker with the Saenuri Party (NFP), during an appearance on MBC radio on June 23.

“Improving relations between South Korea and Japan is in the national interest of South Korea, and returning to an antagonistic relationship will not help at all,” said Yuji Hosaka, professor at Sejong University.

Others say that deliberations between the leaders and foreign ministers of the two countries need to be kept in place in order to manage various crises that can arise and to find political solutions to pending issues that have run aground.

“South Korea, China, and Japan had been taking turns hosting a trilateral summit meeting. China and Japan had never failed in this responsibility, but when it was South Korea’s turn in 2013, it dropped the ball. The price that was paid for missing this opportunity was the deterioration of Japan’s relations both with South Korea and China,” said Choi Sang-yong, ambassador to Japan during the administration of former president Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) and professor emeritus at Korea University, in a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh.

Choi suggested that, if the three countries had actively pursued trilateral cooperation that dealt with non-political issues, they would have been able to maintain a channel for dealing with more combustible political issues as well.

The South Korean government explains that it didn’t host the trilateral meeting because of the intensifying conflict between China and Japan after Japan nationalized the Senkaku Islands (called the Diaoyu Islands in China) in 2012, but the Senior’ Officials Meeting (SOM) of vice-minister level officials took place despite that.

There are also warnings about linking diplomatic issues to domestic politics.

From the beginning, the current administration maintained an extremely tough stance on Japan. During her speech on the March 1st Movement public holiday in 2013 shortly after her inauguration as president, Park Geun-hye said that “the historical perspectives of aggressor and victim will not change though a millennium passes by.” This could reflect the domestic opposition to the rightward shift in Japan symbolized by the Shinzo Abe’s inauguration as Japanese Prime Minister during the same period.

With the South Korean government adopting a suicidal foreign policy that focuses more on public opinion at home than on the country in question, it is also true that the government has insulted and even vilified that country’s leader. South Korea has criticized Abe’s “stalker diplomacy,” while Japan has criticized Park’s “tattletale diplomacy.”

“Foreign policy is an extension of domestic rule, and the Park administration is no exception,” said Moon Chung-in, professor at Yonsei University. “But the excessive politicization of foreign policy can have negative consequences.”

“The Park administration has stubbornly held to the comfort women issue and refused to hold a summit until now. Depending on how she deals with these two issues in the future, we should be able to determine whether or not she has a tendency of accommodating domestic politics,” said Cho Se-yeong, guest professor at Dongseo University.

South Korean diplomats are currently reflecting on the old adage that foreign policy that only reflects public opinion leads to disaster just as surely as politics that fails to reflect public opinion.

By Kim Oi-hyun, staff reporter

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