Bipartisan cooperation, national consensus are prerequisites
This year marks the 78th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan, but the relationship between the two countries could hardly be worse. Over nearly eight decades, genuine reconciliation did not grow more possible but became tougher to realize. Why?
People will see part of the reasons in a public debate at the National Assembly tomorrow. The open forum, organized by the foreign ministry and the Korea-Japan Parliamentarians' Union, will discuss ways to resolve the long-standing issue of compensating surviving South Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor.
Korean diplomats will likely explain their "solution" at the public hearing and seek "the participants' understanding."
As far as it's known, the Yoon Suk Yeol government plans to compensate victims with donations from Korean businesses without the participation and formal apology of the Japanese government or companies.
That will satisfy none ― victims, opposition parties and the public.
Reconciliation and cooperation between Korea and Japan are needed for regional and global economies and security. As the old saying goes, however, haste wastes any bilateral maneuvers. Just look back eight years ago: the former Park Geun-hye administration tried to apply a similar approach to former sex slaves to Japanese soldiers in a 2015 agreement.
It was worse than doing nothing. Faced with hostile public opinion, the following Moon Jae-in administration had to virtually nullify the accord. President Yoon is right to regain the "lost five years" in bilateral ties, but he is wrong if he repeats his conservative predecessor's mistake.
Tokyo blames Seoul for "moving the goalpost" whenever political power changes hands here. However, as Koreans see it, Japan's political leaders ruined hard-won accords at the last minute. Then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made no moves to "restore the dignity of victims" under the agreement, only stressing its "complete and irreversible" settlement. No Korean leader can accept such brazen-faced behaviors.
This time, too, the Japanese government does not admit the historical fact of forced labor. For example, Tokyo has not kept its promise to write expressly about Korean forced laborers' toils and sacrifices on the so-called Battleship Island after registering it on UNESCO's Cultural Heritage list.
Japanese officials say they would express some regrets if their Korean counterparts made victims accept the solution. However, the order must be the other way around. As former President Park said, an assailant and a victim cannot change their position no matter how much time goes by.
After watching what President Yoon has done recently, however, one can hardly know who's the injurer and the injured.
"The Korean side has kept asking to have a summit, so we had to meet," Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told the Japanese media after a brief summit with Yoon in New York last November. "We will watch how they do it from now on." It was a thinly veiled demand to resolve the forced labor issue. Most Koreans will find it difficult to understand why their leaders must endure such humiliation. All this traces back to the lousy agreement of 2015.
Korean leaders who tried to hastily put history behind them, whether due to economic needs or diplomatic pressure, were wrong. Former President Park Chung-hee fastened the first button incorrectly 58 years ago, and his daughter also bungled it eight years ago. The incumbent president needs not ― and must not ― follow their leads. He must show the U.S. and other countries how Japan and its rightwing leaders are blocking Seoul's efforts to restore a healthy relationship.
As in everything else, internal unity is a prerequisite. Yoon must meet with opposition politicians to form a united front and seek the public's support. The Korean government and businesses can pay the victims first, provided their Japanese counterparts will follow with similar gestures, however symbolic they might be.
If Yoon pushes ahead with what a victim described as the "0-100 defeat," bilateral ties will move back by decades, not years.
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