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When Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in Seoul on Sunday to nurture the fledgling détente between neighboring countries, South Korea was waiting intently for what he had to say about the brutal Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula in the early 20th century.
Mr Kishida’s two-day trip follows a visit in March by South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, to Tokyo. It means shuttle diplomacy between the two main US allies is back on track after regular exchanges between the countries’ leaders ended in 2011 due to historical differences.
Few countries welcomed the thaw as much as the United States. For years, he has urged Tokyo and Seoul to drop past grievances and cooperate more, to stave off the nuclear threat from North Korea and help Washington deal with China’s economic and military ambitions.
When he met Mr. Yoon in Washington late last month, President Biden thanked the South Korean leader for his “courageous and principled diplomacy with Japan.”
In March, Mr. Yoon removed a roadblock in relations with Japan when he announced that South Korea would not demand Japanese reparations for victims of forced labor during World War II, but would instead create its own funds for them. Mr. Yoon said that Japan is not expected to “bow down because of its history 100 years ago”.
The olive branch to Tokyo is part of Mr Yoon’s broader effort to reshape South Korean diplomacy, aligning his country more closely with countries with “shared values”, particularly the United States, on supply chains and “free and open” Indo. – The Pacific.
Mr Yoon’s diplomatic concessions were a political boon for Mr Kishida at home, but costly for Mr Yoon in his own country, where South Koreans accused him of “traitorous, condescending diplomacy”. Domestic critics say he gave too much and got something back from Japan, which he says has never apologized or made amends — a common complaint among other Asian victims, particularly in China and North Korea, of Japan’s World War II aggression.
For many South Koreans, what matters most in their relationship with Tokyo is how Japanese leaders view the colonial era, a time when Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names; when schools removed Korean language and history from the curriculum; and when tens of thousands of Korean women were forced into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army. They will judge Mr. Kishida’s visit on whether – and how directly – he will apologize for the past.
“South Koreans are all listening to what Kishida has to say about history,” said Lee Junghwan, an expert on Korea-Japan relations at Seoul National University. “If they say it’s not clear, just make a reference to the statements of past Japanese leaders, as they want, maybe it won’t go down very well.”
Mr. Yoon’s administration has tried to sell South Koreans on its reach by raising hopes that Japan will retaliate — for example, by allowing Japanese companies that benefited from forced labor during the war to make voluntary contributions to a South Korean victims’ fund. In recent weeks, Tokyo has lifted export controls imposed on South Korea after a dispute over forced labor erupted in 2018 and has begun the process of placing the country back on the “white list” of preferential trading partners.
But if Mr. Kishida fails to live up to South Koreans’ expectations of history, “it will cast a shadow over everything he’s been able to do in the last few months,” said Daniel Sneider, a professor of East Asian studies at Stanford University. “It’s more important what they say about the past than whether, for example, a Japanese company ended up donating funds to Korean forced laborers.”
The Seoul trip is a leadership test for Mr. Kishida, and an opportunity to show whether he can step up Mr. Yoon’s efforts at reconciliation, analysts said.
“An unusual window exists for him to demonstrate bold statesmanship and shift the seemingly endless vortex of negativity between Japan and Korea,” said Prof. Alexis Dudden at the University of Connecticut, an expert on Korea-Japan relations.
For example, Mr. Kishida could pay a reflective visit to Seoul’s monument to the suffering of Koreans under Japanese occupation, Professor Dudden said, comparing the move to Poland in 1970 by German Chancellor Willy Brandt. But doing so – let alone kneeling in front of the monument, as Chancellor Brandt famously did in Warsaw – may be too much to ask from Mr. Kishida, because his country’s right-wing nationalists are ready to “make him pay for whatever he sets out to do.” between countries,” he said.
The last time Japan’s leader visited South Korea, relations were so bad that the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, remained seated during a standing ovation as North and South Korean Olympians walked together during the opening ceremony of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
Mr Kishida, traveling amid a friendlier mood, said he wanted to “increase momentum” to improve relations. But some analysts believe that the decades-long tension will melt away easily, given the political pressure at home on the two leaders.
“More than 90 percent of our bilateral relations are domestic politics,” said Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat. “So the South Koreans cannot forgive us. They will continue to pressure us, and they want to keep this kind of relationship forever by moving the goal posts.
For his part, Mr Kishida needs the support of Japan’s right-leaning politicians, who are among the most influential in choosing party leaders. Mr. Miyake said he would be “surprised” if Mr. Kishida “suddenly made overly conciliatory comments vis-à-vis South Korea.”
But Tokyo may be wondering how to navigate subtle pressure from the United States, analysts say.
Mr. Biden’s repeated praise of Mr. Yoon’s diplomacy was “a kind of message not only to President Yoon but to Kishida,” said Junya Nishino, a law professor at Keio University in Tokyo. Mr. Nishino added that a recent electoral victory by Mr. Kishida’s party in a special election last month may have given him “more diplomatic space.”
Mr. Yoon’s own determination to improve ties with Tokyo is fueled in part by changing public opinion in South Korea. In a recent survey, China has replaced Japan as the most favorable country, especially by young people.
But misgivings about Japan have deeper roots among South Koreans than Mr. Yoon expected, analysts said. A survey taken in March found that 64 percent of South Korean respondents said there was no need to rush to improve relations unless Japan changed its stance on history.
Mrs. Dudden warned Seoul, Tokyo and Washington not to treat “history as background music today and have nothing to do with how to communicate immediate concerns – in this case, standing firm on North Korea and also on China.”
As the history of bilateral relations between South Korea and Japan has repeatedly shown, the step of reconciliation through one historical dispute accomplishes little if another dispute, such as territorial rights over the flight of islands between the two countries, is rekindled.
“Historical issues have a way of coming back and biting you in the rear,” Mr. Sneider said. “This is not just a short-term public opinion issue. It is an identity issue in Korea.
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