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President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol chairs a status report meeting of subcommittees of his presidential transition committee on March 31 at the committee’s Tongui neighborhood offices. (pool photo)

Responding to the historical distortions in textbooks that were recently approved by the Japanese government, South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol said Thursday that he would “respond sternly to any distortion of history in the future.”

“Yoon has said several times since his time as a candidate that while he wants Korea’s relationship with Japan to develop, Japan must first have a correct historical attitude and be fully remorseful for the past,” Yoon’s spokesperson Kim Eun-hye said in material sent to reporters on Thursday.

When asked on Wednesday about historical distortions in the Japanese textbooks, Kim had only given a generic response. “It’s inappropriate for the president-elect to offer an opinion about foreign policy. [Yoon’s position] is that [the two sides] should hold discussions to develop future-oriented relations based on a correct historical attitude,” she said at the time.

Kim offered the more concrete response about responding “sternly” on Thursday after the Democratic Party went on the attack, suggesting that “now that power is changing hands, some are saying that even our history is changing, too.”

That issue was brought up by Park Hong-keun, floor leader for the Democratic Party, in a policy coordination meeting at the National Assembly on Thursday.

“The Korean public is getting anxious about the silence of the president-elect, the person who will lead our relationship with Japan. [Yoon] has worried people with his misleading talk about there not having been an explosion or radiation leak in the Fukushima nuclear accident and with his remark that the Japan Self-Defense Forces could be stationed on the Korean Peninsula in the event of a war,” Park said.

“Continued silence [from Yoon] will only underscore the poverty of his attitude toward history and the lack of vision he has shown thus far. The Korean public wants a president who can talk tough about Japan’s historical distortions. Public buy-in is also needed for diplomacy and cooperation.”

Facing criticism of this sort, Yoon’s camp retorted that the Democratic Party ought to be more charitable to the president-elect.

“The reason that Yoon has refrained from mentioning this issue until now is that Japan’s diplomatic partner at the moment is the current administration and because we thought the right thing for Yoon to do given his status as president-elect is to respect what the administration does on individual matters of foreign policy. Last we heard, the Democratic Party is still the ruling party,” said Kim, Yoon’s spokesperson.

“It’s regrettable that [the Democratic Party] is making remarks that seem designed to make political hay of foreign policy matters,” Kim said, adding that “we respectfully ask for their cooperation with an attitude of prioritizing the national interest.”

By Seo Young-ji, staff reporter

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