President Yoon ignored victims' will to mend ties with Japan

By Mitch Shin

On March 6, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin announced a plan that could be a momentum to resolve one of the country's major obstacles between South Korea and Japan ― compensating South Korean victims of wartime forced labor. After months of coordination with the forced laborers and Tokyo since South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol took office in May 2022, Seoul finally unveiled its plan to circumvent the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling that has been a key cause of the cacophony over bilateral relations with Japan.

Yoon said the decision was made in order to build a future-oriented relationship with Japan, an important state actor for coping with the growing aggression of North Korea. According to the released polls, however, more than half of South Koreans criticize the government's new plan in the absence of Tokyo's sincere apologies toward the forced laborers.

Among the many controversial aspects of Park's announcement, an eye-catching one is Seoul's consideration shown to the Japanese corporations that were ordered to compensate their victims directly. Thanks to Seoul's new plan on the forced labor victims, they are no longer required to follow the Supreme Court's ruling, while South Korean companies, such as the steelmaker POSCO, have made donations to the foundation that would compensate plaintiffs on behalf of the Japanese corporations ― Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

In the announcement, Seoul will also seek to create a "future youth fund" to sponsor scholarships for students in a bid to make the impression that this decision was for moving forward to the future, not staying in the past. However, since the fund was never discussed with the victims and their representatives in the past few months when Park was trying to persuade them of the government's new idea, it is questionable why this funding program was included as part of Seoul's plan to resolve the years-long historical disputes with Tokyo. Furthermore, as Japanese students have limited access to the historical facts on the war crimes Japan committed against Korea under imperial annexation, enticing Tokyo to give a proper history lesson to Japanese students could have been a more welcome approach for the victims and their families.

During the press conference, Park said it is not everything to receive apologies from Japan. However, Tokyo has never made apologies for its wartime forced labor. Japan has unilaterally argued that it had already made apologies for the historical disputes with South Korea so as not to hold any accountability. Also, it has repeatedly mentioned that the historical disputes are off the table ever since South Korea received a package of $300 million in economic aid and $500 million in loans from Japan under the 1965 treaty. However, what the victims have ceaselessly demanded was a sincere apology from Japan, which has compromised contemporary Japanese leaders.

Hours after Park's announcement, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi held a brief press conference and said Tokyo defers to the 1998 agreement made between then leaders of South Korea and Japan ― Kim Dae-jung and Keizo Obuchi ― as a friendly response. Considering the governments of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's attempts to misrepresent historical facts concerning its war-time crimes during World War II since Shinzo Abe regained power in 2012, however, it is uncertain whether Tokyo will make any provocative moves on the historical disputes such as its nonsense territorial claim on the island of Dokdo, wartime sex slavery and forced labor issues.

Unfortunately, even after Seoul's voluntary announcement was made, Tokyo has not admitted that the South Korean laborers were forced to work for the Japanese corporations. Given the circumstances, Seoul again failed to negotiate with Japan to resolve the victims' deep sorrow. Wrapping up the historical disputes which cannot even be resolved in one shot, Seoul wounded the victims who already have indelible scars.

As a follow-up on Seoul's dedication to mend ties with Tokyo, the leaders of the two countries had a formal one-on-one meeting in Tokyo on March 16, the first of its kind since former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Tokyo in 2011. The sudden notice of holding the summit meeting between Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida implied that Yoon pushed the foreign ministry to devise a plan, snowballing criticism among the opposition parties that the cost Yoon paid for having a meeting with Kishida is incomparable to what he did to the South Korean victims and their families.

In an interview with Yomiuri Shimbun published on March 15, Yoon proudly introduced the plan and said it was his idea. He also guaranteed that this issue will not be reignited even after his presidency.

Unlike autocratic countries, the leaders of democratic countries have a limited term to serve the people. Yoon's term will end in 2027, and he is then ineligible to serve a second term by law.

In light of the term limits on leaders in democratic countries, it is important for them to know that there are things they cannot control or handle even though they are the most powerful ones in their countries. One of the untouchable matters is a historical dispute because what the victims and bereaved families experienced in the past cannot be resolved through diplomacy between temporary government officials. They are the ones who live with insurmountable pain, and it is not what the government can handle. That is why Germany has been consistently making apologies to the victims of the Holocaust and their bereaved families even though it already apologized multiple times in the past.

"We honor the victims of the Holocaust by remembering them and by learning from their plight. That is our everlasting responsibility for today's and future generations," former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during her video address for the first Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, an event organized by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the United Nations and UNESCO in January 2021.

Unlike Japan, Germany has been fully taking "everlasting responsibility." Not only making apologies and paying tribute to the victims, it also has not hesitated to pay aid and support to the survivors of the Holocaust. JTBC, a South Korean television network, reported on August 2019 that Germany has spent about $80 billion to support Holocaust victims.

Therefore, Japan's claim that the historical disputes have already been resolved by the 1965 treaty demonstrates how it views its history of victimizing countless innocent Koreans during the 35 years from 1910 to 1945.

Yoon's unilateral decision to cross the victims' will to mend ties with Japan is intolerable as he clearly abandoned the victims' deep-rooted grudge. He said he would take full responsibility for his decision but he will never be able to take that responsibility, because the one who should take the responsibility over the historical conflicts between the two countries is not the president of South Korea but the emperor of Japan.

Mitch Shin is an assistant editor at The Diplomat. Shin was a nonresident Korea Foundation fellow at Pacific Forum and a nonresident research fellow at Institute for Security & Development Policy, Stockholm Korea Center.