Leaders of Japan and S. Korea agree to keep talking — that’s a breakthrough
|
Version 0 of 1. SEOUL — The leaders of South Korea and Japan held their first formal summit in 3 1/2 years on Monday, a meeting that was almost entirely devoid of substance but will nevertheless come as a relief to Washington, which has despaired about tensions between its two key Asian allies. The meeting between South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in which they simply agreed to keep working to resolve their historical disputes, was hardly warm. The two met for one hour and 40 minutes on Monday morning, a postscript to a trilateral summit with China. There was no concluding lunch, no joint news conference and no love lost. But the very fact that the two sat in the same room and posed for the obligatory grin-and-grip was considered a major diplomatic breakthrough. “If there was no shouting match, and if this summit enables continued dialogue between the two countries, then I would consider it a success,” said Chun Yung-woo, national security adviser to Park’s predecessor. “We can’t expect any miracle breakthroughs on the real issues, but we need to get out of the woods.” [S. Korean leader’s U.S. visit highlights Obama’s foreign policy challenge in Asia] Relations between South Korea and its former colonial master have seldom been good, but they have been particularly bad since the hawkish Abe became Japan’s prime minister. Abe, who took office in December 2012, and Park, who became South Korea’s president three months later, have encountered each other at multilateral meetings but have never sat down for a substantive conversation. For a while, this animosity served each leader’s domestic political purposes well. Park could tap into anti-Japanese sentiment to divert attention away from troubles at home. Public opinion polls here regularly show that South Koreans view Japan as a greater threat than nuclear-armed North Korea and Abe as less likable than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Abe, meanwhile, has championed a strong Japan that is fed up with what he sees as an endless clamor for apologies over wartime atrocities and has tried to draw a line under historical issues. [A (very) short history of Japan’s war apologies] But a key sticking point remains: the issue of “comfort women,” whom Japanese soldiers used as sex slaves during World War II. Mainstream historians estimate that about 200,000 women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula and China, were forced to work in military brothels. Japan issued a landmark apology for this practice in 1993, but conservatives around Abe have repeatedly claimed that the women were simply prostitutes, rekindling anger in South Korea, where about 50 of the women still live. During Monday’s talks, Park said the issue was the “biggest stumbling block” to better relations. “The two leaders agreed to speed up consultations to try to quickly resolve the issue of ‘comfort women,’ ” an aide to Park told local reporters. Seoul and Tokyo have held nine rounds of talks on the issue, with Park’s administration pressing Abe’s government to make some sort of concession, saying Japan has not been sincere in its apologies. There were several small protests against the summit, with some South Koreans saying it should not have been held without a proper apology beforehand. But Tokyo insists that it has sufficiently atoned, with the 1993 apology and $800 million in compensation in 1965 for Japan’s colonial brutality. Abe said Monday that the issue “should not be allowed to remain as an obstacle” for future generations and that Japan and South Korea needed to build a “future-oriented cooperative relationship.” The Obama administration has been particularly concerned about the tensions between its two main allies in Asia, especially as China seeks to exert more control over the region. Although Monday’s efforts to break the ice will be welcomed in Washington, analysts noted that the statements from Park and Abe were vague. “They shelved all the hard stuff,” said John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul. “They didn’t get into real security issues, they didn’t touch on North Korea, and they tabled the primary conflict, which is over history,” he said. “They were holding hands, but they ducked the issues.” The meeting came at the end of a trilateral summit with China, which was represented by Premier Li Keqiang. It was the first such forum in about three years. South Korea and China, which are enjoying a new era of closeness, have been particularly suspicious of the changes to Japan’s 70-year-old pacifist constitution, which Abe and his government “reinterpreted” to allow Japan’s military to fight abroad in specific circumstances. Japan’s neighbors view this as a step toward remilitarization. The three parties released a statement after their meeting, declaring that “trilateral cooperation has been completely restored” because of a recognition of shared economic and security interests. But Japanese media contrasted the cool reception that Abe got compared with Li. Li was on an “official” visit, according to South Korea’s Blue House, the presidential residence, and was greeted with a ceremony complete with red carpet, honor guard and official banquet. But Abe, who was classified by Seoul as being on a “working” visit, received no such fanfare. He went straight from the airport to the trilateral summit on Sunday and flew out after the meeting with Park, after a mere 28 hours in South Korea. The Japanese side had requested a lunch meeting, but South Korea declined because of lack of time, Fuji TV reported. Chun Hye-ran, a spokeswoman for Park, said that the two leaders had “much time” together and that the South Korean president did not have time to have lunch with Abe. Li was given special treatment because he had proposed an official bilateral visit to South Korea before the trilateral summit and the Blue House agreed, Chun said. “PM Abe never proposed such a separate official visit,” she said. Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Yuki Oda in Tokyo contributed to this report. Read more: War between China and Japan ended 70 years ago, but fighting continues Emperor offers a regal critique of Japan’s drift away from pacifism Japan’s wartime past still a volatile issue as prime minister visits Obama |