Curious Case of South Korea: Part 5

No love for Japan in South Korea

If Koreans are ambivalent about the United States, they flat out hate Japan.

Let this sink in: in a hypothetical war between Kim Jong-un’s tyrannical North Korea and democratic Japan, more South Koreans would side with … North Korea. A poll showed 46 percent would choose to help North Korea, and 15 percent Japan. About 40 percent responded that they have no idea.

When you consider right now any (semi) realistic scenario would involve Kim Jong-un going mad and North Korea first firing missiles at Japan to spark the conflict, it’s even more mind-boggling. (To be clear: I’m in no way suggesting Kim Jong-un is crazy or will do this.)

Backers of all South Koran political parties would support the North in the event it went to war with Japan. Nearly 53 percent of those who identify with President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party and 43 percent of those who back the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party, as well as 41 percent of those with no party affiliation, supported such a move.

The survey also found that more than a third viewed Japan as a future military threat to South Korea, while 61 percent viewed it as a threat currently. That’s a problem because Japan is the regional power South Korea most needs to help it balance China.

Japan has been quietly rebuilding its navy.

With 18 diesel electric submarines, four so-called “helicopter destroyers” that look suspiciously like small aircraft carriers, 43 destroyers and destroyer escorts, 25 minesweepers and training ships, fleet oilers, submarine rescue ships and other vessels, Japan’s navy is the second largest in Asia, and one of the largest in the world. And that’s with Japan still pretending to honor the pacifist constitution that prevents it from having “offensive” armed forces. It is also highly advanced technologically. Japan is working on building the world’s fastest hypersonic missile.

In other words, if China becomes a big problem for South Korea and the region, Japan is a big part of the solution. Both are democracies with first world economies. South Korea and Japan should have a mutual defense treaty. Yet as we outlined in Part 1, history still poisons their relations and jeopardizes badly needed military cooperation.

To wit: the first intelligence-sharing agreement between the two nations was on the verge of breakdown after a spat over what happened during the Japanese occupation.

The General Security of Military Information Agreement, was an incremental treaty that allowed the two countries to directly share information on North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities. The deal was finally implemented in 2016, though it was signed in 2012. It got delayed because so many South Koreans were against the idea of having any kind of military agreement with the Japanese.

But worse trouble started in 2018 when the South Korean Supreme Court allowed the assets of two Japanese companies to be seized and sold to compensate comfort women and other workers conscripted during Imperial Japan’s 35-year occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

Japan retaliated by putting restrictions on exports to South Korea of high-tech materials essential to the country’s booming tech industry. Japanese firms would need to apply for a license to sell fluorinated polyimide (critical for making TV and smartphone displays) and etching gas and resists (critical to semiconductor manufacturing) to firms in South Korea. Major trouble for South Korean tech titans like Samsung and SK Hynix. These two companies alone account for around 60 percent of global memory chip production.

Tokyo also wanted to make South Korea the first country ever to be axed from Japan’s list of 27 “friendly” countries that are exempt from export controls on products that could be used for weapons manufacturing, threatening a wider array of Korean products and potentially the country’s growing military sector. South Korea responded by threatening to terminate the intel sharing agreement.

Withdrawing from it would have meant Seoul would no longer receive quick notification on irregular activities in regional waters. In 2019 alone, Seoul and Tokyo exchanged “classified military information about North Korea 7 times” according to the government-backed broadcaster.

South Korea eventually backed down and the intel sharing agreement remains. Keep in mind, this agreement does not involve a tiff over farm products. It and future deals like it with Japan directly go the safety and security of South Korea, which lives in a very rough neighborhood.

Why does this happen?

Demands for war reparations occasionally taint Germany’s relations with countries such as Greece, but never to the exclusion of all else. While Britain’s colonial legacy — which includes plenty of brutal behavior — seldom hampers its current diplomacy.

The problems are uniquely Korean. Psychologically, Korea didn’t defeat its Japanese occupiers. They went home after Japan was defeated in World War II. Koreans never got the satisfaction of beating-up their bully.

The first attempt at reconciliation came in 1965. Authoritarian ruler Park Chung-hee signed a treaty with Japan government that provided US $300 million in grants and US $200 million in low-interest loans to settle the past. It sparked such public outrage at the time that U.S. officials recommended Park introduce martial law in response.

In the 1990s, when South Korea was newly democratic and the suffering of the comfort women first came to light, most Japanese people were willing to address their history. Apologies were made — and yes, they were stilted. South Korea said they accepted them. Then Korean activists urged former comfort women not to take money from the fund because it did not come directly from the Japanese state.

Another settlement was signed in 2015, signed by Park Chung-hee’s daughter Park Geun-hye. (Mr Moon’s predecessor, who was impeached and jailed after mass protests over corruption.) The 2015 deal, struck at some political cost to Mr Abe but renounced almost immediately by Mr Moon, was the last straw. Tokyo has no interest in another compromise.

From the Japanese perspective whatever apologies Tokyo makes, they’re judged not sincere by Koreans. As Yoshitaka Shindo, a Japanese member of parliament and former communications minister said to the Financial Times, “How can we negotiate more with a country that ignores past agreements and doesn’t just move the goalposts but destroys the goal itself?”

The divide in South Korea is political. Many of Korea’s top conglomerates started life under the Japanese and the rich and powerful families that run them are viewed as collaborators. Leftists slur the right as being, “pro-Japan.” What they really mean is “collaborators.”

For Mr Moon, attacking Japan is attacking his political foes and reinforcing his core support. Insiders from Mr Moon’s ruling party concede that the issue plays well for a government that is struggling to fulfill promises on the economy and North Korea. But for many Koreans, Mr Moon’s actions also reflect their firm belief that agreements signed between Seoul and Tokyo — especially the critical 1965 deal that normalized relations — never had their consent and thus lack legitimacy.

Essentially, the left in South Korea plays politics with their country’s national security. They’re not the only left-wing party in the world to do that. But South Korea’s threat matrix is very unique.

Picture worth 1,000 words …

This takes a toll on public opinion in Japan. This year, the percentage of Japanese people with a negative impression of South Korea overtook the percentage of South Koreans with a negative view of Japan in an annual poll conducted by Genron NPO, a think-tank.

Squabbling about the distant past is silly when Norwegians and Swedes do it. It’s downright dangerous when you face a rogue nuclear state like North Korea and a rising power like China.

Let’s be clear: what the Japanese did in Korea during their 35 year occupation was an atrocity. What the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor was an atrocity, too. So was their treatment of Allied prisoners and subjects in World War II. The British, French, Germans, Soviets, Ottomans and Imperial Chinese all did bad things.

Scottish fought the English for 500 years. Scotland was the poorest place in Europe. Then in 1605 it made peace with its past and joined with England in the Act of Union forming Great Britain. Scots built the British Empire, and Glasgow was briefly the richest city in Europe.

Could the Japanese be more contrite? Yes.

But, the Japan of today is not the Japan of 1935.

And you only make peace with your enemies. Japan and South Korean have good reason to make-up.

China wants it empire back.

China has a strategy for building an empire that would also make it the world’s dominate power. It’s outlined here in our primer on Mahan and Makinder.

Succinctly, Xi Jingping’s vision for One Belt, One Road is designed to secure first the resources of Central Asia to build an impenetrable economic empire and then use that to project sea power that would make all of Eurasia plus Africa China’s sphere of influence.

As Americans believe their country is a “shining light on a hill,” Chinese believe a world with Beijing at the center of a new tribute system is the natural order of things. The education system in China explicitly teaches this. In our Foreign Policy primer, we discuss how history creates national expectations. Foreigners kow-towing is China’s national expectation.

Or as China’s former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi put it, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact.”

South Korean and Japan will stand together or kow-tow together.