T.K. Park is clearly one of the leading analysts of South Korean affairs in the US today. I particularly liked his insight near the end of today's installment, of his series of articles titled Korea-Japan and the End of the '65 System. * He observes that Abe crossed a line in Japan- Korean relations by confusing the economic and security relationship between South Korea and Japan with the untended historical disputes. This was a decisive step in the wrong direction following the poor example set by Trump's chaotic shake it up and see what happens approach to international relationships including security alliances. T.K.'s insight is this:
It is difficult to overstate the damage that Abe’s trade war caused to the ’65 System. The ’65 System was able to persist and grow because South Korea and Japan had separated the cost of System—namely, the historical issues—from the benefit of the System, namely the economic and security partnership. This was initially achieved by South Korean dictators suppressing the Korean victims of Japanese imperialism. But even after the victims began voicing their injury in the 1990s, South Korea and Japan were able to continue the ’65 System by drawing a clear line between the historical issues on one hand, and the economic and security issues on the other.
Abe’s trade war crossed this critical line. To exercise leverage on the historical issues, Abe used economic cooperation with South Korea as a chain around Seoul’s neck. When the blowback began for engaging in a trade war, Abe made up a national security excuse that no one believed in. From there, the decline of the ’65 System passed the point of no return.*
*Korea-Japan and the End of the '65 System - Part V: the End of the '65 System
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2019/09/korea-japan-and-end-of-65-system-part-v.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
During the transitional period of more liberal governance since the period of authoritarian rule in South Korea, T.K's article provides some explanation of how the separation of historical grievances from the need for cooperation somehow survived to preserve a pragmatic relationship between South Korea and Japan which he now feels is gone.
There is also a congruent but slightly different perspective. Kim Dae Jung's liberal administration only came to power by compromising with Kim Jong Pil, the former head of the KCIA during the Park Chung Hee, pro-Japanese ( 친일파 ) right wing dictatorship. Roh Tae Woo's conservative administration continued to represent the interests and parties that had flourished under dictators Park and Chun Doo Hwan until Chun was forced out of power by pro-democracy demonstrations in the late eighties. Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung did not and could not come to power until they accommodated those pro-Japanese right wing interests in a political alliance with Kim Jong Pil, a minority regional politician and conservative stalwart. During DJ's rule as president, he pursued progressive initiatives such as the Sunshine Policy with North Korea, but was presented with the same obstacles Syngman Rhee had faced decades before. Namely, the notion that the popular grievances against domestic colonial era criminal colloborators with Japan (and their conservative progeny) would arrive at some just denouement was stifled by political compromise, this time by the need to form a governing coalition in a representative government. Forming a governing coalition could not yet be achieved without once again reigning back the historical issues domestically. This is what the NY Times had to say in its eulogy to Kim Jong Pil, the former KCIA director, and advocate for the 1965 Agreement with Japan:
...Any politician with presidential ambitions had to pay respects to Mr. Kim and win his favor.
He helped Kim Young-sam win the presidency in 1992, forming a political alliance with him and Mr. Roh, in which their three parties merged. Later, after a falling-out with Kim Young-sam, he merged his new party with that of Kim Dae-jung, who went on to be elected president in 1997. He became prime minister under President Kim Dae-jung, who would win a Nobel Peace Prize for his policy of outreach to North Korea, including a historic summit meeting with Kim Jong-il, then the North’s leader.*
*Kim Jong-pil, Political Kingmaker in South Korea, Dies at 92, NT Times obituary, By Choe Sang-Hun, June 23, 2018; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/obituaries/kim-jong-pil-south-korea.html
The experiment of returning to a nostalgic revisionist view of South Korean dictatorships by electing Park Geun Hye, the daughter of the former Japanese Imperial Army officer, and dictator of South Korea, failed. This has allowed Moon Jae In, to finally repudiate the costs of the pro-Japanese element in conservative Korean politics to the chagrin of the right wing governments in Japan and the US.
Correction: this article was edited Sep. 18, to delete a misstatement about the relationship of Kim Jong Pil to the Chun dictatorship and to add Kim Jong Pil's relationship to the Kim Yong Sam administration.
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