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Former Minjoo Party leader Moon Jae-in makes a keynote speech about chaebol reform at a forum held at the National Assembly on Jan. 10. (by Lee Jeong-woo

With Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn making his first official remarks as acting president on Jan. 10 on the issue of South Korea’s dispute with Japan, stating that “it’s advisable to refrain from words or actions that could aggravate the situation,” attention is shifting to the approaches being taken to South Korea and Japan’s Dec. 28 comfort women agreement by the leading candidates in the presidential election. The candidates who are preparing for an early presidential election will have numerous diplomatic crises to deal with, including not only the Dec. 28, 2015 comfort women agreement but also conflict with China over the THAAD missile defense system. For the most part, the main candidates have committed themselves to repeal, or at least renegotiate, the Dec. 28 agreement.

Starting with the candidates from the opposition parties, Moon Jae-in, the former leader of the Minjoo Party who is leading in recent polls, has described the Dec. 28 agreement as “a good example of deep-rooted problems with our foreign policy” and has expressed the need to renegotiate the agreement. “What Japan needs to do is to acknowledge its legal responsibility and to make an official apology. We need new negotiations that will make this clear,” Moon maintains. South Chungcheong Province governor Ahn Hee-jung is also calling for the agreement to be renegotiated.

The position of Ahn Cheol-soo, former co-leader of the People’s Party, is that the agreement negotiated by the Park Geun-hye administration should be scrapped and invalidated. Other candidates who share Ahn‘s view about scrapping the agreement are Seongnam Mayor Lee Jae-myung, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, former Minjoo Party leader Sohn Hak-kyu and Minjoo Party lawmaker Kim Bu-gyeom. Since calls to scrap the agreement are likely to eventually lead to calls to renegotiate it, there is an inevitable connection between the two positions.

The leading presidential candidates in the ruling party also think that the Dec. 28 agreement should be renegotiated. Yoo Seung-min, a lawmaker with the newly formed Righteous Party, said that the comfort women agreement lacked “a sincere apology by Japan or an acknowledgment of its responsibility,” and former Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said that “Japan’s apology was itself unclear and inadequate.” Gyeonggi Province governor Nam Kyung-pil also thinks that the agreement should be renegotiated.

Considering that not one of the ten frontrunners in the race thinks that the Park administration‘s agreement should be implemented in its current form, the agreement issue could be refocused on finding ways to cancel or renegotiate it during the early presidential election.

There are definite differences between the opposition and ruling party candidates in their positions on THAAD, however, and there are also differences of emphasis among the various opposition candidates. While Moon Jae-in and Ahn Cheol-soo believe that the decision to deploy THAAD was made in haste, they have recently been suggesting that the issue should be discussed under the next administration. Rather than taking a clear yes-or-no stance on a military and security issue on which conservatives and progressives are clearly divided, they appear to be putting off the debate. In contrast, Lee Jae-myung and Park Won-soon are forcefully arguing for the outright cancelation of the decision to deploy THAAD.

Right-leaning candidates are unified in their support of THAAD. The most assertive of them is Yoo Seung-min, who argues that two or three more THAAD batteries should be deployed in addition to the one that is already planned. Nam Kyung-pil also supports deploying THAAD, citing the need for “consistency and stability in the handling of foreign affairs and security policy.”

Ban Ki-moon has yet to declare his position on THAAD. Sources connected with the former UN Secretary-General related that Ban means to make his position clear on THAAD and other issues after he returns to South Korea.

By Song Kyung-hwa and Lee Kyung-mi, staff reporters

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