Pres. Park`s position on Japan

In a speech Friday marking the March 1 Independence Movement Day, President Park Geun-hye urged Japan to change and take responsibility for its wartime atrocities, saying, “The historic dynamic of one party being a perpetrator and the other party a victim will remain unchanged even after a thousand years have passed.” She added, “It is incumbent on Japan to have a correct understanding of history and take on an attitude of responsibility to partner with us in playing a leading role in East Asia in the 21st century.”

The ceremony marking the holiday attracted attention at home and abroad because it was the first official state function since President Park’s Feb. 25 inauguration. In her speech, she urged Japan to change and take responsibility with a much stronger tone than her predecessors. The president, however, did not mention specific issues such as Japan’s territorial claim to Korea’s easternmost islands of Dokdo and the Japanese military’s sexual enslavement of young Korean women in World War II, indicating that she greatly analyzed the strength of her speech.

Former President Kim Young-sam used the term “Japanese imperialists” just once in his first speech marking the March 1 holiday. His successor Kim Dae-jung mentioned Japan only once in his first speech on the same occasion, and Roh Moo-hyun did not mention Japan at all. President Park’s immediate predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, urged Japan to “form future-oriented relations (with South Korea) with a pragmatic attitude” and “not turn away from the truth of history.” Former presidents tried to avoid directly mentioning Japan to show a willingness to look forward rather than backward.

All previous Korean administrations got off to a good start with Japan but experienced a rollercoaster ride in bilateral ties toward the end of their terms. Relations with Tokyo cooled when Kim Young-sam said, “I`ll teach them (Japan) some manners.” Kim Dae-jung opened up Japanese pop culture to Korea, but bilateral relations went through rough seas due to a diplomatic clash over Japan’s controversial revision of school textbooks to whitewash its wartime atrocities. Faced with Tokyo’s territorial claim to Dokdo, Roh warned of a “heartless diplomatic war” between the two neighbors. Under President Lee, bilateral relations fell to their lowest point when he visited Dokdo in August last year and urged the Japanese emperor to apologize for Japan’s wartime atrocities. Of course, Japan incited the Korean presidents to say what they said by denying past wrongdoings. The drive to mend fences with Tokyo often seems Sisyphean.

The chances are high that President Park will be remembered in Japan as a “president of a thousand years.” How her latest comments on Japan will affect bilateral relations remains uncertain. Korean-Japanese ties are littered with landmines such as Dokdo, sexual slavery and history textbooks. Occasionally, absurd remarks by Japanese politicians fly to Korea like a missile. Tokyo will announce the results of its review of school textbook around the end of this month, which will likely create another crisis in bilateral relations.

Now that President Park has expressed a clear and principled position on Japan, she must show the weight of her words. She should try to refrain from coming to the fore in diplomatic issues with Japan, respect the opinions of experts and her aides, and separate national interests from past issues. More often than not, bilateral relations are affected by public sentiment rather than cool-headed reasoning, and presidents are often tempted to capitalize on nationalism. President Park should learn a lesson from such attempts, which were always failures.