Read anything about South Korean politics and foreign affairs, and it doesn’t take much to find that North Korea and Japan are the two countries which it has had the most thorny relations within its history and still does to this day. Some of the reasons behind them are very well justified, others not so much.

However, one should at least be able to acknowledge that North Korea and Japan are worlds apart and that it’s clearly obvious which one of the two countries’ leaders are worse than the other, right?

With South Korea, it would seem that the answer is not quite clear at best. In fact, Shinzo Abe, a democratically elected leader with no record of crimes against humanity or any atrocities against his people, is considered to be worse than even the likes of Kim Jong Un.

Taking into account North Korea’s long record of abusing its own populace since decades ago (not to mention its acts of military aggression against the South) and South Korea’s own bloody struggle against authoritarian rule during the 1980s, it is quite bizarre why anti-Japanese sentiment is much more visible and hostile than anti-North Korea sentiments in South Korea. As far as historical issues, human rights, civil liberties and geopolitics are concerned, one would even perceive that Japan is seen as an equal or bigger ‘threat’ to South Korea.

This isn’t to say that the Japanese occupation era from 1910~1945 was sunshine and roses, or that Shinzo Abe’s links with the most influential of the Japanese political right-wing (which are notorious for pushing to white-wash Japan’s wrongdoings) shouldn’t be left out for condemnation either.

However, there comes a point where historical disputes begin to resemble more of a tool for the sake of nationalism and a sign of poor diplomacy. It has hindered efforts and cooperation on more serious issues lying on the horizon for both South Korea and Japan. For South Korea, such disputes prove not only hypocritical but also further damaging to its own diplomatic relations with Japan and benefit only those who have a strong interest in ensuring ROK-Japan relations remain sour or perhaps even become worse.

Moral Hypocrisy At Its Finest  

Perhaps the biggest example of South Korea’s hypocrisy towards Japan in regards to historical disputes is the comfort women, a term to describe women who performed sexual services for the Japanese military during the Second World War, either voluntarily or forcibly.

In South Korea, the view that is taught in its education system and pushed as the norm by its media is that the Japanese military itself had forcibly abducted up to 200,000 Korean women and girls as sexual slaves. The problem, however, is that this narrative has major inaccuracies that do not support it;

• The claim of 200,000 Korean women and girls forcibly recruited dates back to 1992, stated by Japanese left-leaning newspaper Asahi Shimbun. The publisher would later on in 2015 admit that it had made an error of confusing the comfort women for a female volunteer corps that was made up of women who worked in wartime production facilities.
• Award-winning books written by professors Sarah Soh (Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Post-Colonial Memory in Korea and Japan) and Park Yuha (Comfort Women of the Empire) contain testimonies of several comfort women. These testimonies reveal that rather than being abducted by Japanese troops, they were sold by their own family members. Others had been press-ganged by Koreans working on behalf of the comfort stations, which in turn were also run by Koreans.
• Professor Grant Goodman of Kansas University, during his service as a United States Army intelligence officer in World War 2 also translated a Japanese military document that very much confirmed cases of comfort women who were prostitutes that had been purchased from their families. A copy of these documents was requested by the Japanese government in 1992 and subsequently led to a formal apology and admission known as the Kono Statement in 1993
•  Incidences of surviving comfort women lying about their experiences. Most notably, their original testimonies reveal they had either been sold by their family or openly became prostitutes on their own will. However, when testifying for the UN, they changed their stories by claiming they had been abducted by the Japanese military.

So where is the hypocrisy?

While South Korea is known to demand Japan to acknowledge its viewed narrative of the comfort women, accept full responsibility and make a formal apology (despite Japan has done so not just once, but several times), the problems lie in these;

• South Korea does not tolerate dissent that opposes its narrative in regards to the comfort women. Professor Park Yuha experienced this first-hand, when her book Comfort Women of the Empire came under scrutiny and became subject of a defamation suit by activists who claim to be representing the surviving comfort women. This was followed by an indictment by state prosecutors who sought a three-year prison sentence for her. For a country that takes pride in its fight for democracy and against authoritarian rule (and thus by extension, freedom of speech and civil liberties), this comes across as a huge contradiction.
• Surviving comfort women who actually accepted Japanese compensation in 1994 through the Asian Women’s Fund set up by the Japanese government were subsequently labeled as traitors. This was done by the very activists that helped them in the first place and subsequently, the women were also denied government subsidies by the South Korean authorities.
• South Korea itself also recruited women through dubious means to become prostitutes for the US military forces stationed in the country during the 1950s~1980s. This was done in a manner that very much resembled how some of the comfort women during the Japanese colonial occupation era were recruited. To this day, the South Korean government has never formally acknowledged its involvement and continues to remain quiet to this day.
• Likewise, South Korean military forces deployed in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War also had been guilty of committing sexual violence and allegedly setting up its own ‘comfort stations‘.  With the exception of a brief apology by former President Kim Daejung in 2001, the South Korean government has remained largely silent about the issue.

From a moral viewpoint, South Korea’s demands for Japan to formally apologize and accept full responsibility for the comfort women may sound hypocritical at best. Given it has committed several similar practices itself for decades long after the Japanese occupation had ended, such demands may even not be genuine.

While perhaps not on the same scale as Japan, it nonetheless does not exonerate South Korea in any sense. The country’s long-maintained silence towards its own actions also does not give it the high moral ground it likes to claim. It also further damages its own credibility when it attempts to shut down, punish and shame those who do not tow the national narrative.

Politically, continuing to demand Japan owe up for the issue while denying its own culpability will only continue to further antagonize relations between the two countries. It will also make reaching a mutual agreement even more difficult in the years to come. The only players who will benefit from this are South Korea’s neighbors to its north and west, whom also are its largest security threats both in the short and long term.

The Shadows of North Korean and Chinese Influence

There is little to no doubt that North Korea and China hold a shadowy grip on the comfort women issue that has plagued ROK-Japan relations to this day.  They will not hesitate to use it to split relations even further between the two countries as part of their own geopolitical aims.

As mentioned above briefly in the article, the comfort women today are aided by activists, who genuinely believe in justice for the survivors (if at all). There’s more than what meets the eye, however.

These activists belong to an NGO known as Chong Dae Hyup, also known as the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery. Outside of South Korea, Chong Dae Hyup is believed to be heavily linked to North Korea (some of its members had even been arrested for spying for the North as late as 2013) and has consistently been the most vocal towards any deal that is aimed at settling the comfort women issue.

It is no coincidence that North Korea openly declared the 2015 bilateral agreement between South Korea and Japan that settled the issue for good as humiliating, considering Chong Dae Hyup also was at the forefront in South Korea rallying up nationalist sentiment to oppose the deal. Additionally, Chong Dae Hyup is the very organization behind the placement of the comfort women statues.

From Pyongyang and Beijing’s perspective, there is no doubt that driving a wedge in South Korea-Japan relations will serve them immensely well, as doing so would also weaken the United States’ positioning in the wider Asia-Pacific region. This, in turn, goes hand-to-hand with China’s ambitions of expanding its influence in the region overall, starting with the militarization of the South China Sea but also aiming its sights on the East China Sea where the two Koreas, Japan, and Taiwan are located.

And South Korea, should it continue to let itself be played by the disinformation campaign run by its less-than-belligerent neighbors and consumed by its own nationalism, wouldn’t know any better and will find itself increasingly under their influence without even realizing.

While official Chinese and North Korean propaganda is rather very much straight-forward and resembling something straight out of World War 2, they have proven to be effective in using the comfort women issue for their own agenda. This has convinced a large portion of South Korean academia, media and public opinion to believe in a part of history that has been twisted for political agendas aimed at weakening the country’s relationship with Japan and to an extension, the United States.

Conclusion

South Korea continues to dig itself into a deeper hole, being goaded by NGOs with a highly dubious if not outright dangerous agenda that does not serve the best interests of the country in the long run. It also fails to recognize that its quest for justice for the surviving comfort women themselves is at this point is disingenuous and will make improving relations with Japan increasingly difficult.

While there’s no doubt that Japan could also do more on its own part, it has arguably done much more to settle the issue than South Korea has in comparison, at least financially.

If South Korea truly desires to establish closer relations with Japan, it first needs to stand firm against NGOS like Chong Dae Hyup that masquerade as warriors of social justice and formally acknowledge its own dark history. It also should allow its own people to question the mainstream narrative that is currently embraced by the media and taught in schools. After that, perhaps then Japan will come further forward to accepting its own past out of good will. The two countries can then establish a closer relationship for the sake of not just their own benefit, but also for regional security and stand together against those that seek to disturb it.

Time is a luxury that cannot be wasted, but alas, it is only time that will tell if South Korea will choose to progress further from its entrenched position.