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Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama speaks at Pusan National University on Oct. 2. (Kim Kwang-soo

While visiting Pusan National University (PNU) to receive an honorary doctorate of political science, former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, 71, responded to South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s recent suggestion during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in New York that the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation should be effectively abolished.

“The Japanese government needs to restart deliberations about its agreement with the South Korean government over the comfort women [sex slaves] for the Japanese Imperial Army,” Hatoyama said during a press conference held on the university’s third floor on Oct. 2.

The Reconciliation and Healing Foundation was established with the 1 billion yen (US$8,790,000) that the Japanese government promised to pay during an agreement about the comfort women reached by South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in December 2015. While some of this money was disbursed to the former comfort women, some of the women refused to accept any money.

Hatoyama offered the following explanation of why the 2015 agreement needs to be reviewed: “Prime Minister Abe did apologize at the time of the 2015 agreement, but he came across as overbearing to the Korean public [by his use of the phrase ‘irreversible’] and hurt their feelings.” The remarks appear to suggest that any agreement without a heartfelt apology by Abe is invalid.

Hatoyama also had some hard words for the Japanese government’s failure to sincerely reflect upon its past. “Japan needs to apologize for having inflicted great pain upon the people of China and Korea through the wrong wars it started in the past. A forward-looking relationship will form when the people who were hurt say that no more apologies are necessary,” he said.

Hatoyama said that the recent inter-Korean and North Korea-US summits were “extremely meaningful and significant.”

“Holding one or two summits doesn’t mean that the nuclear weapon and missile issues will be resolved immediately, but with the support of countries in the area, North Korea will be more likely to dismantle its nuclear weapons. The parties concerned need to continue dialogue and negotiations with perseverance, and neighboring countries need to lend their support so that inter-Korean and North Korea-US summits can be held,” he said.

Hatoyama is regarded as a Japanese politician with a conscience. While he began politics by joining the Liberal Democratic Party in 1984, he left the party after it showed far-right leanings. After being elected the leader of Japan’s Democratic Party in 1999, he served as prime minister between September 2009 and June 2010.

Hatoyama’s progressive shift accelerated after he stepped down as prime minister. He harshly censured Abe for paying his respects at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine (which commemorates convicted war criminals from WWII), and he called on the Japanese government to admit that women had been coerced by the Japanese army into becoming sex slaves during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea and to compensate them.

In 2015, he even kneeled in front of a memorial stone during a visit to Seodaemun Prison in Seoul, where many Korean independence fighters were imprisoned during the colonial period, and offered a heartfelt apology.

Prior to the press conference, Hatoyama visited Yeongnak Park in Busan and paid his respects at the grave of Lee Su-hyeon. In Jan. 2001, Lee was fatally hit by a Tokyo subway train while attempting to save a Japanese individual who had fallen onto the tracks. At 10 am on Oct. 3, Hatoyama is planning to visit a welfare center that was built in Hapcheon County, South Gyeongsang Province, for Koreans who were injured in the atomic strikes on Japan, where they had been forcibly relocated to perform manual labor during World War II. After paying his respects at a memorial at the center, Hatoyama will be visiting an atomic bomb museum and offering consolation to the atomic bomb victims.

By Kim Kwang-soo, Busan correspondent

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