Korea’s Japanese problem

Just a few days before Park Geun-hye was elected as the new Korean president, Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide victory in Japan. That event could have a major impact on Park’s administration over the next five years. The state of Korean-Japanese relations might even overshadow those between Seoul and Pyongyang in terms of importance during her term.

The return of Abe marks a sharp rightward shift in Japanese politics, increasing the possibility of growing tensions in Korean-Japanese ties when it comes to territorial claims over the Dokdo islets and Seoul’s demand for a clear apology from Tokyo on the “comfort women” issue. Although one of Prime Minister Abe’s first acts was to make a conciliatory gesture toward Seoul by sending a former Japanese defense minister to mend ties, progress is unlikely since many of the new Japanese Cabinet ministers are “radical nationalists” in the words of The Economist.

At the same time, the Abe government is set to deliver an economic blow to Korea by easing monetary policy that will weaken the value of the Japanese yen against the Korean won. This will make Korean exporters less competitive against their Japanese rivals. Korea’s relatively robust economic performance over the last few years has been due to its cheap currency when compared to that of Japan, which competes in many of the same product categories. A fall in the value of the yen bodes ill for Korea when the global economic recovery remains fragile.

How Park deals with these challenges from Tokyo will help define her presidency. Complicating her response will be the historical baggage she inherited from her father, Park Chung-hee, who once served in the Imperial Japanese Army and who established diplomatic ties with Tokyo in 1965 during his period of authoritarian rule.

Park faces a dilemma. She could use her father’s association with Japan to help improve ties with Tokyo. But in doing so, she leaves herself vulnerable to a nationalist backlash in Korea, with critics portraying her as being pro-Japanese.

The danger is that Korea and Japan are being sucked into strong nationalist currents that make any chance of compromise between the two impossible. Korea has rightly criticized Tokyo’s current leadership for a regressive and distorted view of history that paints Japan as a victim of Western imperialism in the 20th century. But it may also be an opportune time for Koreans to reach a more balanced assessment of their history under Japanese colonial rule rather than the simplified black and white version they have embraced.

The period between 1910 and 1945 might be considered the most important in Korea’s modern history. For good or ill, Japan was the agent that brought modernity to Korea and the influence of Japanese colonial rule is still apparent today. Korea’s legal system, for example, bears the stamp of the Germanic laws that Japan adopted during the Meiji Restoration period. Korea’s business management practices reflect those inherited from Japan during the colonial period. Park Chung-hee’s industrialization program in the 1960s copied the state-guided capitalism conducted by Japanese big business groups and the military in the 1930s in the Japanese puppet colony of Manchukuo in northeast China, where he served.

In short, modern Korea has a strong strain of Japanese DNA. Although this may be a source of national humiliation, it is nevertheless a fact.

Coming to terms with this, however, is difficult, particularly since treatment of the colonial period has become highly politicized. It is undeniable that certain segments of the Korean population collaborated with Japan’s colonial rulers because of the economic benefits they received. This included rich farmers and urban merchants who supplied food to the Imperial Japanese Army fighting in China in the 1930s and ‘40s. Many of their descendants still comprise Korea’s elite.

In contrast, the peasantry and working class suffered greatly under the Japanese, providing forced labor in Japan and female sex slaves for the Japanese military. It was this exploited class that provided the impetus for the leftist uprisings after World War II. North Korea’s claim that it was a bastion of anti-Japanese resistance, while South Korea was ruled by Japanese collaborators, has added to the controversy over the colonial period.

This historical battle between left and right continues to be fought as witness by the recent presidential election when the legacy of Park Chung-hee was a main focus of the opposition campaign. But perhaps it is time to promote a more nuanced understanding of what happened during the Japanese colonial period if there is to be any chance of reconciliation between Seoul and Tokyo as well as that between liberals and conservatives at home.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com. <The Korea Times/John Burton>