Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Seoul — the first such trip in over 12 years — and his cautious personal expression of contrition for Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula are expected to give South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol a boost and add more momentum to improving ties.
But while the two leaders will look to bask in the success of a fruitful summit, the relationship remains fragile — despite the breakneck speed of progress Kishida and Yoon have made, experts say.
Sunday's summit spotlighted the return of “shuttle diplomacy” — where leaders hold regular visits to each others’ countries — but also saw the Japanese leader reiterate his determination to stand by Japan’s past apologies for its 1910-45 colonial rule of the peninsula while delivering a rare articulation of his own feelings on the issue.
“My heart aches, as many people went through very difficult and sad experiences in the harsh environment at that time,” Kishida told a joint news conference after the summit, calling it his “duty as prime minister of Japan” to cooperate with South Korea to revitalize ties.
It was the first time since taking office that Kishida had publicly expressed his own thoughts on the delicate issue, which has been at the center of long-standing historical animosity between the neighbors. His remarks, plastered on the front of Japan’s major newspapers on Monday, offered a glimpse of the prime minister’s strong willingness to repair the relationship.
According to local media reports, it was the prime minister himself who urged officials to make the bilateral meeting happen ahead of a Group of Seven leaders summit scheduled for May 19 to 21 in Kishida’s Hiroshima constituency.
Amid a tight diplomatic schedule that saw Kishida welcoming the Bangladeshi leader on April 26 and leaving for a multicountry tour of Africa on April 29, government officials had initially eyed a summit for later in the summer, at the end of the ongoing session of parliament. However, Kishida decided to expedite his reciprocal visit to Seoul, which followed Yoon’s March trip to Tokyo, in a further attempt to burnish his diplomatic credentials.
But while Kishida’s approach to ties with South Korea has won plaudits among much of the public, his actions also expose him to criticism from conservative lawmakers in his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, experts say.
“An official apology from Kishida was never on the cards for domestic political reasons,” said Robert Ward, the Japan Chair at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The PM, who faces a party leadership election next year, won’t want to alienate the more nationalist wing of the LDP, which opposes further contrition,” he added.
Conservative LDP lawmakers remain largely skeptical about conciliatory moves aimed at keeping South Korea engaged in the process of improving ties. Seoul’s history of reneging on past deals, most notably the 2015 “comfort women” agreement that was intended to “finally and irreversibly” resolve the issue, have left a deep mark on Japan’s hawkish establishment.
The term “comfort women” is a euphemism for those who suffered under Japan’s military brothel system before and during World War II.
Another issue to have roiled bilateral ties is that of wartime labor, with related South Korean court rulings over Japanese compensation for some laborers sparking tit-for-tat moves by Tokyo and Seoul. LDP hard-liners have urged Kishida not to offer concessions on the issue.
In an editorial Monday, the right-leaning Sankei Shimbun daily criticized Kishida’s remarks, saying that the Japanese have no reason to apologize over the wartime labor issue, considering Japan wasn’t the only country mobilizing a labor force at the time.
“Although it is the Japanese side that is a victim of accusations going against historical evidence, Prime Minister Kishida's remarks give the impression that Japan is the perpetrator,” the editorial said. “These are wrong and regrettable remarks, putting the cart before the horse.”
Still, Kishida could win points for being the first Japanese leader make a reciprocal visit Seoul in over 12 years “and showing personal vulnerability in addressing the wartime labor issues,” despite the risk of domestic criticism, said Shihoko Goto, deputy director of the Asia program at the Washington-based Wilson Center think tank.
Across the Sea of Japan, Kishida’s remarks were a positive surprise for the South Korean side, which thanked him for his steadfast resolution to repairing ties and expressed its hopes that his words would strike a chord with the South Korean public.
But the remarks — however deeply felt they may have been — won’t be enough to improve Yoon’s domestic position, Ward said.
“His ‘kokoro ga itamu omoi' (heart aches) statement was significant both in and of itself and because it suggested an attempt to cut Yoon some political slack. It won't, however, move the needle for Yoon,” he said.
Yoon’s political standing at home remains relatively weak, Ward added, noting that his pro-Japan stance still faces resistance from opposition parties and a section of the public. Indeed, while Yoon’s approval rating rose for the second straight week, according to a public opinion poll released Monday, it remained a dismal 34.6%. More worryingly, his disapproval ratings have hovered around double that, at 62.5%.
South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party has also been very vocal in its rejection of the current administration’s efforts toward improving ties, labeling Yoon’s efforts “humiliation diplomacy.”
“Why should the prerequisite for restoring bilateral diplomacy be giving up on our history,” Yonhap quoted a spokesman for the party as telling a news conference Monday.
Yoon has worked to improve ties at considerable political risk, taking the initiative to hold out an olive branch and crafting a plan to resolve the wartime labor compensation issue entirely with South Korean cash, said Goto.
Although the South Korean president’s decisiveness has yet to see a substantial payoff in opinion polls, the increasing need to unite in tackling common challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs will almost certainly mean warm ties remain a high priority for both leaders in the short term.
“The hope from both leaders will be that this thaw becomes embedded in bilateral relations,” Ward said, noting that East Asia's external environment has “been completely transformed since 2018.”
“Threats from North Korea and China have intensified, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the fragility of the rules-based order on which both depend,” he added. “Hence their revived cooperation is a critical underpin for stability in the region.”
Relations in arenas as diverse as trade, economic security and cultural exchanges are also already showing considerable signs of improvement in a remarkably short period of time. The two sides have even demonstrated that there is room for cooperation on the thorny issue of Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“As the meetings between the two leaders become regular and routine, there will be less public attention and the expectation is that public objection will also weaken, especially when both are dealing with shared critical security and economic challenges,” Goto said.
So far, the two leaders seem to have learned from past mistakes and have carefully avoided touching upon more sensitive topics, including territorial disputes and the comfort women issue, while hailing their meetings as exercises in trust-building.
As Kishida wrapped up his visit to South Korea on Monday, the prime minister reiterated his eagerness to build a greater sense of trust with Yoon in order to “open a new era” of bilateral ties. But observers say there remains a long road ahead.
According to Ward, domestic factors in each country, coupled with nagging mistrust on both sides, as well as “the still lingering differences over shared history and territorial disputes, mean that the reconciliation is still fragile, despite the momentum coming from Kishida and Yoon.”
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