hankyoreh

Shinzo Abe

Will the Japanese government pay the 1 billion yen (US$8.30 million) it promised in an agreement it reached with the South Korean government on Dec. 28 about the comfort women issue even if the statue of a young girl symbolizing the comfort women is not removed from its current location in front of the Japanese embassy?

“It’s important for both sides to trust each other and to make good on what they have promised to do for each other,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, hinting that Japan would likely be unable to pay the 1 billion yen unless the statue is relocated.

While Abe did not explicitly state that removing the statue was a precondition for paying the 1 billion won, he did link the two issues by making mention of a “trusting relationship” between the leaders of the two countries.

“What is important about the solution this time is that, unlike what we agreed in the past, both countries recognize this is a solution that is final and irreversible,” Abe said when asked whether Japan would still provide 1 billion yen to the foundation established by the South Korean government even if the statue is not relocated.

The question was posed to Abe during a joint interview with Japanese newspaper Nikkei and British paper the Financial Times on Jan. 18

With this goal in mind, Abe said, South Korea and Japan will need to responsibly implement the terms of the agreement. Both sides will have to take appropriate measures in order to open up a new era in their relationship, he added.

At the end of the interview, when he was asked once more whether Japan would fulfill its part of the bargain even if South Korea’s National Assembly does not back the comfort women settlement, Abe said that both he and Park would take appropriate action to follow through on the promises they had made each other.

“If we didn’t have a relationship of mutual trust, we probably wouldn’t have reached this agreement, but President Park and I have that kind of trusting relationship,” Abe said. “I think it’s important for us to trust each other and to do what we ought to do.”

What is notable about Abe’s comments is that they represent a response of sorts to a message from Park asking Japan to refrain from treating the relocation of the statue as an established fact.

The South Korean government has repeatedly responded to talk about relocating the statue by insisting that there is nothing it can do about the statue. On Jan. 13, Park even had Seo Cheong-won, chair of the Korea-Japan Parliamentarians’ Union, deliver a message to Japan asking it to take steps to ensure that the spirit of the settlement is not endangered by factually inaccurate reports in the press.

But with Abe’s true feelings coming to light in this interview, the South Korean government finds itself under greater pressure to implement the Dec. 28 settlement.

Seoul has to persuade the comfort women and groups supporting them, such as the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Jeongdaehyeop), to stop calling for the settlement to be scrapped. It also has to take the lead in setting up a foundation while at the same time relocating the statue.

If the Japanese government does not moderate its current attitude about the statue, it appears likely that the South Korean government will be compelled to choose between either effectively abandoning plans to implement the Dec. 28 settlement or risking a public backlash by forcibly relocating the statue of the young woman.

By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

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