Expert Speak Young Voices
Published on Oct 21, 2020
Tensions continue to plague Japan - Korea ties For well over a year now, the relationship between Japan and South Korea has been in free fall. What began as a mere continuation of the long-standing dispute over the region’s controversial history has snowballed into a quasi-conflict with far reaching implications for the US-led regional security architecture in the Pacific. The heart of this dispute centres around Japan’s controversial colonisation of Korea from 1910 till the end of World War II in 1945. The list of crimes Japan is accused of is long: forced labour, prostitution and mass killings. When both nations finally normalised ties in 1965, Japan offered over $500 million dollars of economic aid in lieu of reparations and in return, Korea agreed to settle all wartime claims against Japan “completely and finally”. Despite this, the issue of history has been an open wound in the bilateral relationship. In 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that two Japanese companies were liable to pay compensation to Koreans who were forced into working for these companies in World War II. Recriminations flew thick and fast afterwards as Japan accused Korea of violating the 1965 Treaty by reopening claims for compensation. Matters took a turn for the worse when Japan announced that it was restricting high-technology exports of certain chemicals and items used in the manufacture of smartphones and semiconductors. It claimed that Seoul’s export control measures had failed to prevent these sensitive technologies from falling into the hands of countries like North Korea, Syria and Iran. The ban was a heavy blow to South Korea’s economy as Korean companies like Samsung and SK Hynix dominate global markets for semiconductors. Japan followed up this action by removing Korea from its “White List” of preferred trading partners who benefit from fast-tracked export control procedures. While Japan claimed its decision was purely a technocratic law enforcement issue, many in Seoul saw it as retaliation for the 2018 Korean Supreme Court ruling on reparations. Korea responded with a tit-for-tat removal of Japan from its own White List. In August 2019, South Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the critical  General Security of Military Intelligence Agreement (or GSOMIA). Brokered in 2016, this three-way intelligence sharing agreement helped Tokyo and Seoul contain North Korea by sharing sensitive intelligence through Washington. Under pressure from the United States, President Moon Jae-In agreed to extend the agreement but Korea’s threat to pull out of GSOMIA is worrying for several reasons. Politicians in Korea have long struggled to bat for increased strategic cooperation in Japan in the face of strong public opposition. It was President Lee Mung Bak who crafted a policy that sought closer ties to Japan. Lee committed his country to working with Japan on containing North Korea, exchanging naval observers and participating in joint military exercises. However, Lee was unable to sell a more comprehensive cooperation pact to the Korean public as his position was weakened by popular outrage at Japan’s perceived efforts to rewrite and ignore colonial history. In 2016, GSOMIA was finally approved as part of an attempt to deepen ties with Abe’s Japan. For Korea to even threaten to pull out of a critical intelligence sharing pact in the face of an aggressive China should be enough to send alarm bells ringing in Tokyo, Washington and beyond. More than a year on, both sides have struck a conciliatory note in an effort to bring tensions down. Things seemed to be looking up in November 2019 when Korea not only renewed GSOMIA but also agreed to shelve a proposed WTO case against Japan’s aforementioned technology export controls. However, in February 2020, Japan lodged a case at the WTO challenging Korea’s government assistance to its shipbuilding industry and Korea responded in June by reopening its case against Japan. Matters are made worse by fresh disputes concerning the Dokdo/Takeshima Islands, claimed by both sides. In January 2020, Japan opened a national museum that details the country’s historical claims over the island in the face of protests from Seoul. The breakdown in bilateral relations could have grave consequences for the Indo-Pacific. The economic tensions could hardly have come at a worse time. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic decimated supply chains, the global economy saw weak growth as the US-China trade war gathered steam and spooked investors. With global economic prospects in tatters, South Korea has become increasingly dependent on semiconductor companies to drive export growth and Japan’s export ban has seriously jeopardized the former’s economic health. Any disruption in semiconductor production is also likely to impact global players like Apple, Dell and Huawei. To make matters worse, South Korea’s population has reacted to Japan’s actions with fury and widespread boycott campaigns have successfully targeted Japanese companies. Further, tensions over Dokdo/Takeshima exposed crucial weaknesses in the Japan-Korea defence partnership when a Russian jet conducting training exercises with China violated the air-space over the island in 2019. Both Korea and Japan scrambled to respond to the situation and inevitably clashed over the question of which side was responsible for the defence of the islands. Many believe that Moscow and Beijing took advantage of the strain in ties to push Tokyo and Seoul further apart. The situation is exacerbated still by North Korea’s increasing recalcitrance. In 2019, North Korea resumed intercontinental missile testing, over a year after it negotiated a moratorium on missile tests with the United States. What followed was a barrage of missile tests that attempted to display Pyongyang’s newly acquired firepower. This is especially worrying as Japan and South Korea have formed a strong bulwark against China and North Korea in the past. China’s 2013 move to create an Air-Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) which overlapped substantially with Japan’s own ADIZ caused Japan and Korea to repudiate China’s actions by conducting joint exercises within China’s proposed zone without obtaining prior authorization. Such cooperation increasingly seems like a thing of the past. Even more damaging to the Indo-Pacific security architecture has been the conspicuous absence of the US. As its most important allies in the Pacific clashed, the US decided to stay out of the conflict except for diplomatic niceties that called for “a path forward”. Engrossed with its own trade war with China and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US has been unable to devote the attention needed to forge a compromise between the two sides. When they finally did come, US efforts were underwhelming. Trilateral meetings to discuss deescalation were cancelled due to supposed “scheduling conflicts” while reports surfaced that both Japan and South Korea were irked by the United States’ entreaties to resolve their differences. Many, including experienced Japan watcher Michael Green, felt that US efforts were too little, too late. In the absence of US leadership, China has offered to intercede and even hosted a trilateral summit with the warring parties in 2019. While Chinese efforts are unlikely to succeed, the declining US influence in the region has become painfully clear and may contribute to increasing instability. So, what is to be done? Firstly, the COVID-19 outbreak and its negative economic consequences may make trade hostilities too costly to continue. South Korea has an interest in negotiating easier trade flows for its mainstay semiconductors while Japan may not wish to endanger its long-suffering economy. Secondly, Chinese and North Korean aggression remains a threat to the stability of East Asia. Neither side has an interest in letting Beijing run amok. However, on the controversial issue of historical atonement, the prospects of a settlement appear bleak. In 2015, Abe and President Park Geun-Hye of Korea agreed to set up a joint fund to compensate victims of forced prostitution during World War II. The deal was savaged by Korea’s opposition parties and on assuming office in 2018, President Moon Jae-In dissolved the joint fund. By rejecting the 2015 deal, South Korean politicians have scored something of an own goal. With Abe’s deal dead in the water, Japan may lose the appetite to settle historical issues. Korea’s repudiation of the 2015 deal confirmed Japanese fears that Korea cannot be trusted to keep to a final historical settlement. As former Communications Minister Shindo Yoshitaka pithily asked, how could Japan negotiate with a country that “doesn’t just move the goalposts but destroys the goal itself”. Neither side can now afford to back down. Nationalist sentiment in both countries has been whipped up through maximalist statements from leaders like President Moon who promised Koreans that they would never “lose to Japan again”. The perennial strategic tensions between the two nations has birthed lasting animosity among the general public. Opinion polls showed that 70% of the South Korean respondents had an unfavorable impression of Japan while 54.4% in Japan shared a similar view of South Korea. These trends indicate that settling the conflict through compromise may cost more political capital than either side is willing to expend. With the citizens of both nations now unwilling to compromise even in the face of economic ruin and foreign aggression, Japanese and Korean policymakers can only wonder at the hole they have dug themselves into.  As John Galbraith might have put it, Korea and Japan must now choose between “the disastrous and the unpalatable”.
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