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Yasumasa Nagamine

The Japanese government announced that Yasumasa Nagamine, Japan’s ambassador to South Korea, would be returning to Seoul 85 days after being recalled to Japan in protest of the setting up of a comfort woman statue in Busan. While Japan had held to the hardline stance that Nagamine would not return unless South Korea removed the statue in Busan, it has abruptly changed course on the eve of a new government in South Korea.

“We’ve decided to have Japanese Ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine and Japanese Consul to Busan Yasuhiro Morimoto return to South Korea on Apr. 4,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Apr. 3. The reasons for suddenly returning the ambassador to his post after a nearly three-month absence, Kishida said, were Park Geun-hye‘s removal from the office of presidency, a joint response to the North Korean issue and South Korea and Japan’s Dec. 28, 2015 comfort woman agreement.

“First, since former president Park Geun-hye’s removal from office has brought South Korea into a transitional phase between administrations, [Japan] needs to put an even greater emphasis on information-gathering. Second, responding to the North Korean issue requires a close exchange of information between Japan and South Korea at a high level,” Kishida said.

“Our diplomats have protested about the comfort woman issue and have asked for the comfort woman agreement to be prioritized, but that hasn’t gotten results. In regard to the comfort woman statue, we decided it was necessary for Nagamine to personally ask acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn to abide by the agreement and to also ask the next administration to uphold the agreement,” Kishida went on to say.

The hardball tactics of recalling Nagamine to protest the comfort woman statue and not sending him back for 85 days (the longest removal in history), reaped political dividends for the Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, increasing its approval ratings. Along with recalling the ambassador, Tokyo has stepped up its rightward shift by pressing Seoul to remove the comfort woman statue and by adding territorial claims to Dokdo (called Takeshima in Japan) to textbooks.

But Japan appears to have decided to recall the ambassador after Park‘s impeachment paved the way for a presidential election in South Korea, a series of missiles launched by North Korea increased the need for more intelligence cooperation on the North, and heightened anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea raised the risk of the comfort woman agreement being called off. Even inside Japan, critics alleged that the government was so focused on tormenting South Korea that it had missed the appropriate time to return the ambassador to his post.

When asked why the ambassador was being sent back when the situation of the comfort woman statue remained unchanged, Kishida said, “We don’t think that the South Korean government’s current response will result in [the removal of the comfort woman statue in Busan]. Therefore, we’ve decided that we need to communicate [Japan‘s] views directly.”

When asked whether the transfer of power in South Korea could cause the new administration to change its attitude about the comfort woman agreement, Kishida said, “Japan and South Korea clearly made an agreement in front of the international community. I don’t think that will change even if the administration changes.”

“We expect that Nagamine’s return to his post will facilitate closer bilateral communication,” an official from South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in regard to the Japanese government’s decision.

“The Japanese government probably concluded from its own calculations that it stood to lose more than it would gain by continuing to delay the ambassador’s return,” said Cho Sae-young, director of the Japan Research Center at Dongseo University.

“While the ambassador may be returning to his post, it’s not as if Japan can pursue a new relationship with South Korea’s current caretaker government. I don’t think there will be an immediate change in South Korea-Japan relations. For now, as we’re starting to see who will be the candidates in South Korea‘s presidential election, I suspect that Japan will focus on gathering information and on reaching out to the various campaigns,” Cho said.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent and Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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