The Sado Gold Mine Decision

General Masaharu Homma
"Beast of Bataan"
Sado Island was family fiefdom

Is Compromise Over History Possible?

First published on the Korea Economic Institute website, August 14, 2024

BY Daniel Sneider, APP Member, is a Lecturer of International Policy and East Asian Studies at Stanford University and a Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America. The views expressed here are the author’s alone.

The transformation of relations between South Korea and Japan during the past two-plus years is one of the signal accomplishments of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. However, there remain doubts over the durability of this achievement. A troubling question remains whether the historical past of Japan’s colonial rule over Korea will again roil relations. The ongoing division between the two countries over colonial and wartime history, alongside Korean demands for historical justice, is again on display in recent weeks.

Background and Controversy Surrounding the Sado Gold Mine

On July 27, the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) formally granted the prized World Heritage Site status to the gold mines located on Japan’s Sado Island. Submitted to UNESCO in 2015, Japan had included the mines on a list of sites that supported its industrial revolution. The Sado gold mines were developed during the Tokugawa era and played an important role in Japan’s modernization. Although the mines are no longer operational, they have been preserved as a historical site for tourists.

The controversy surrounding Japan’s application centers on the wartime history of the mines and the use of Korean workers to carry out dangerous mining operations. The South Korean government and civic activists opposed the granting of World Heritage status to the gold mines. Koreans, along with numerous Western and Japanese historians, insist that many of the workers were brought to the mines against their will, either through coercion or deception. The objections to the granting of World Heritage status rested on compelling Japan to acknowledge the role of Korean forced labor at the site itself and in its official accounts.

The Sado decision reflected a compromise by Japan that was supported by the South Korean government and reached through diplomatic negotiations. It included an agreement by Japan to present the role of Korean workers and their harsh working conditions, as well as hold an annual ceremony to pay respect to them. An exhibit at a museum near the site was created to provide information on the more than 1,500 Korean laborers who worked there, including the fact that they faced more dangerous conditions than their Japanese counterparts and other harsh measures.

However, it avoided using the term “forced labor,” which the Japanese government has always opposed. Within Korea, this compromise has been assailed, particularly by the opposition Democratic Party and Korean media commentary. The Yoon government has been accused of deliberately and misleadingly claiming that Japan had agreed to fully accept this history.

“The Japanese government had never acknowledged the concept of forced labor,” former Korean Ambassador to Japan Shin Kak-soo told this writer in an email exchange. Even in the case of Battleship Island (discussed below), it tried to find language that avoided the term. “This time, it seemed the negotiations did not squarely address this issue.”

Nonetheless, Ambassador Shin believes that the compromise was justified. “My hunch is that the Korean government strove to put more emphasis on the real teaching of history to the visitors to the site than arguments on the wording,” the former diplomat, who remains active on relations with Japan, said. “We need to assess the outcome as a product of diplomatic compromise, given the big gap between the two sides on their historical views.”

Japan Fails to Fill Out the History

At the time of the 2015 application, the Japanese government, then led by the late Abe Shinzo, denied the forced nature of Korean labor and discrimination against Koreans at the sites. But UNESCO insisted that Japan clearly admit that “a large number of Koreans and others…were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites.”

The coal mine operated on Japan’s Hashima Island, popularly known as Battleship Island, was granted World Heritage status in 2015, but only after Japan agreed to include the “full history” that would “allow an understanding that there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites.” Even then, a follow-up monitoring team found in 2021 that the information center failed to do this.

In the case of the Sado Mine, historians have documented that at least 1,519 Koreans were forced to work from 1939 until the end of World War II. The initial application filed by the local government, which sought the status to promote tourism to the island, made no mention of the wartime era. It confined itself to the history of the mines during the Tokugawa and Meiji era (until 1912), seeking to avoid this controversy.

The Korean government opposed this application, as did UNESCO experts. UNESCO’s International Council on Monuments and Sites requested that the Japanese applicants deal with the wartime period, and a supplemental document was submitted to respond to this issue. The document offers a description of three phases of labor “recruitment” that implies the Korean workers voluntarily agreed to work at the mines until 1944, when labor “requisition” was compulsory. The Japanese official document also asserts that there was no discrimination between Korean and Japanese workers and that the Koreans were paid wages.

The descriptions of the phases of “recruitment” in the document are “misleading,” Dr. Nikolai Johnsen, a British scholar at the University of London who has researched and written extensively on this history, told this writer. The workers were signed up by agents supported by the colonial government “who compelled large groups of men from impoverished Korean villages to take up dangerous work in Japan under false pretenses.” During the second phase, which began in 1942, the colonial regime directly selected the workers, and opposition “often had dire consequences” in the form of “forced mobilization,” the scholar said.

Further, Johnsen explained that “claiming this system was non-discriminatory is simply historical denialism.” Wages and working conditions were far from equal, and much of the wages were never paid, held in accounts by Mitsubishi but never released.

The Japanese account also uses the term “workers from the Korean Peninsula,” a formulation that treats Koreans as subjects of the Japanese Empire and refuses to recognize them as foreign forced laborers. “Recognition of the true character of this history would greatly elevate the universal value of the Sado mines as a UNESCO World Heritage site,” Johnsen wrote in a paper published two years ago. “They cannot be suppressed for the sake of instilling pride in future Japanese generations to the neglect of the victims.”

Lingering Disputes and the Shadow of History

This is not an issue confined to the question of World Heritage status. Suits filed in Korea by Korean workers and their descendants against Japanese companies who used forced labor – and in the case of these mines, Mitsubishi Materials – were a central part of the downturn in Korea-Japan relations in 2018. The successful rulings in favor of the workers, who demanded compensation for unpaid wages, remain an issue despite the Yoon administration’s decision last year to resolve the problem by using a Korean-funded foundation to settle the demands.

That is quite distinct from the way Mitsubishi Materials dealt with a suit filed by Chinese forced laborers that was settled in Chinese courts in 2016 with compensation payments and an apology from the company. The company also offered similar apologies [sic, there was only one apology] to American POWs used as forced labor in their mines during the war. The contrast with Japan’s approach to Korea remains problematic, to say the least.

As noted, the Yoon administration’s drive to improve relations with Tokyo is a signal accomplishment. From the standpoint of geopolitics, the most notable consequence of this improvement has been the deepening of trilateral security cooperation with the United States and Japan. However, both trilateral ties and improved bilateral relations with Japan remain vulnerable not only to a change in political leadership but also to the lingering and potentially explosive effects of unaddressed historical grievances.

Repairing trust under fire

While North Korea Tests, South Korea And Japan Walk A Narrow Bridge To Restore Relations

By Daniel Sneider, Lecturer, International Policy at Stanford University and APP member

Oriental Economist, October 14,2022

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, perhaps emboldened by his embrace of Russia’s war in Ukraine, has unleashed a wave of missile tests, with a possible nuclear test to come. The Pyongyang regime claims to be developing tactical nuclear weapons and to be responding to recent joint military exercises by the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

Ironically, the most immediate impact of North Korea’s relentless pace of missile testing, highlighted by the flight of an intermediate range missile over Japan on October 4, has been to draw Japan and South Korea closer together, and to give life to U.S. entreaties to its two allies to join in closer trilateral security cooperation. The most significant sign of this shift was visible two days later in the waters between Korea and Japan.

In those seas, two American guided missile ships were joined by two Japanese Maritime Self Defense destroyers and the Korean navy’s most advanced destroyer in carrying out a first ever trilateral ballistic missile defense exercise. During the same week, the three countries carried out joint air exercises as well.

This was a highly symbolic move toward, as the US Indo-Pacific Command put it, “the interoperability of our collective forces.” The exercise involved detection, tracking and interception of potential incoming missiles, with almost instantaneous sharing of information among the three navies. This kind of quiet cooperation on missile defense has been going on for several years, with Korean providing tracking data on North Korean launches to the de facto joint US-Japan Air Defense Command set up at Yokota airbase outside of Tokyo.

“North Korea's unprecedented series of ballistic missile tests, its newly legislated nuclear doctrine and threats to carry out preemptive nuclear attacks, and the prospect of a seventh nuclear test (and more to come) have served as a powerful reminder to Tokyo and Seoul of the common danger they face,” observes former senior U.S. State Department official Evans Revere. “That danger has encouraged the ROK (Republic of Korea) and Japan to work together, and with the United States, to confront their shared threat by strengthening defenses, increasing readiness, and enhancing bilateral and trilateral security cooperation.”

The creation of a more formal trilateral missile defense structure is the logical next step, though it faces considerable political hurdles in both Korea and Japan. This possibility has alarmed not only the North Koreans but also the progressive opposition in South Korea.

The leader of Korea’s Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, made headlines by denouncing the trilateral drill as a “pro-Japanese act” that was heading towards the creation of a military alliance. “We cannot imagine the day when the Japanese military invades the Korean Peninsula and the Rising Sun Flag again hangs over the peninsula, but it could come true,” railed Lee, who narrowly lost the presidential election earlier this year to conservative Yoon Suk-yeol.

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) quickly denounced Lee’s inflammatory remarks as a “a frivolous take on history.” But President Yoon is struggling with sagging popularity ratings which makes him vulnerable to the Democratic Party, which continues to control the National Assembly and is sharply critical of the President.

“The Korean public is generally supportive of improved relations with the U.S., cautious regarding China, generally supportive about Japan,” says Scott Snyder, who heads the Korea program at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Overall Yoon is doing what South Koreans want to see in foreign policy but increasingly he is in danger of not getting credit for it and is in danger because of his own unpopularity.”

Despite those problems, Yoon’s efforts to make a breakthrough with Tokyo have broad backing in Korea. In their recently published annual poll of Japanese and South Korean opinion, Japan’s Genron NPO and the Korean East Asian Institute found a significant shift in positive views toward each other.

It was the largest improvement since the survey began a decade ago, with the most marked change in South Korea. In particular, the Genron-EAI poll showed a growing fear of China in Korea, beginning to echo what has been the case in

Solving the forced labor problem

Trilateral security cooperation, even with the North Korean threat to propel it, still depends on solving the wartime historical issues that arose out of Japan’s colonial rule over Korea. While Japanese and Korean officials, and their American counterparts, emphasize the need to look forward, all also understand that the history problems are a sword of Damocles, always threatening to send Korea-Japan relations back into a deep freeze.

Attempts to resolve the issue of compensation for the Koreans forced to work in Japanese mines and factories during the wartime period remain stalled, with a looming threat by Korean courts to seize the assets of Japanese companies which used that labor.

Publicly Japanese officials continue to insist that they are waiting for Korea to make a concrete proposal to resolve the forced labor problem. According to multiple Korean official and other sources engaged in this issue, however, a proposal is on the table and is being actively discussed at the director-general level of the two foreign ministries, most recently on Tuesday in Seoul.

Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa and Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, who have a long-standing and friendly personal relationship, have held detailed talks, most recently in New York at the United Nations.

The Korean proposal emerged out of the advisory group that was formed in the summer under the leadership of Korean Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong.

The Korean idea is to compensate up to 300 South Korean victims with payments made through an existing fund – the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan – set up by the Korean government in 2014. The fund already has a significant contribution by the Korean steelmaker POSCO which benefited from Japanese economic assistance provided under the 1965 Japan-Korea Claims Agreement which accompanied the normalization of relations between the two countries.

Using this fund indirectly acknowledges Japan’s insistence that compensation was settled by that 1965 agreement. The amount of money already in the fund is more than sufficient. But the victims who filed suit in Korean courts, and their legal representatives who participated in the advisory committee meetings, insist that the Japanese companies also contribute to this fund.

Park proposed two steps to be taken by Japan, according to a senior Korean official who has been working on this issue for many years. “One is that the Japanese government and the related companies have to express regrets,” he told this writer. “The other is that the Japanese government should allow the private sector to contribute voluntarily to the compensation fund.”

At this moment, the Japanese officials involved in the talks have not ruled out this solution. “The Japanese side does not show a negative attitude toward the voluntary contribution of Japanese firms,” says Amb Wi Sung-Lac, a former senior foreign ministry official and a foreign policy advisor to Democratic party leader Lee. To that degree, “bilateral consultation is moving forward,” says Wi, who is actively involved in these efforts.

Korean officials are concerned about the lack of apparent readiness on the part of Prime Minister Kishida and his advisors to grasp this moment. For the Korean government to be able to sell this proposal within Korea, where it will undoubtedly face fierce attack by the progressives, it is essential that Japan take a step forward.

“Money itself is not a problem,” says the senior Korean official. “Rather it is a matter of pride and emotion. But the Japanese government seems to be very reluctant to agree on a deal to resolve the issue.” The Japanese have yet to budge from their standing position that this issue was settled by the 1965 agreement and is reluctant to reopen it in any way.

The largest obstacle to this agreement remains the domestic politics of both countries. “The political weakness of Yoon and Kishida is a factor that influences the process,” says Professor Park Cheol-hee, one of the most influential Korean scholars on Japan and a close advisor to the Yoon government.

The opposition Democrats in Korea are poised to oppose this bargain. Amb Wi has proposed the creation of a bipartisan group that might include Democratic party leaders who back the deal and has been publicly urging Yoon to take this approach.

But it is equally crucial for Prime Minister Kishida to be prepared to offer the kind of gestures that might make it possible to garner broad public support in Korea. Japan needs to go beyond its overly legalistic stance, argues U.S. Korean expert Scott Snyder. “The Koreans need some kind of reciprocating gesture from the Japanese side in order to make it sustainable,” he told Toyo Keizai.

Unfortunately, Kishida remains imprisoned by the rightwing of the Liberal Democratic Party which deeply distrusts the Koreans. And that is compounded by his own political weakness, which increasingly mirrors that of Yoon.

Domestic politics, not the absence of a viable compromise proposal, is the real obstacle on this narrow pathway to restoring normal ties between Japan and Korea.

“Going forward, Yoon and Kishida are likely to move slowly to avoid getting out too far ahead of the respective publics,” says Revere, who has long experience as an American diplomat in both countries. But the window of opportunity may not be open long – the Japanese and Korean officials now holding talks are looking to make a deal by the end of the year. In that timeframe, he says, “North Korea can be counted on to remind Seoul and Tokyo that they have a strong common interest in working together.”

Monday Asia Events July 18, 2022

MARKING THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ROK-U.S. FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: STRENGTHENING ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGY TIES IN SAN FRANCISCO. 7/18, 5:30-6:30pm (PDT), IN PERSON. Sponsor: Asia Society Northern California. Speakers: Wendy Cutler, Vice President, Managing Director, ASPI; Jong-Hoon Kim, Independent Director, Chairman, Board of SK Innovation; Sangsoo Yoon, Former Consul General, Republic of Korea in San Francisco. Moderator: James Green, Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Google. 

USAID ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER ON THE STATE OF GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION. 7/18, 10:30am-Noon (EDT), ONLINE AND IN PERSON. Sponsor: CSIS. Speaker: Samantha Power, Administrator, USAID. 

THE STATE OF THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: FOUR YEARS AT THE HEART OF UK-U.S. DEFENSE. 7/18, 1:00-2:00pm (EDT), ONLINE EVENT. Sponsor: CSIS. Speaker: Edward Ferguson, Minister Counsellor Defence, British Embassy Washington D.C. 

THE ROLE OF CARBON AND DIRECT AIR CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY IN OUR CLIMATE STRATEGY. 7/18, 2:00-3:15pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: GreenTech. Speakers: Dr. Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist, Chief Carbon Wrangler, Carbon Direct; Sarah Grey, Senior Associate, Arnold & Porter; Dr. Rudra Kapila, Senior Policy Advisor, Carbon Management, Third Way; Ethan Shenkman, Partner, Arnold & Porter; Dr. Jennifer Wilcox, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, U.S. Department of Energy; Jeremee Wetherby, Emerging Technology and Incubators Product Line, GE Gas Power. 

MARITIME SECURITY DIALOGUE: A DISCUSSION WITH THE ASSISTANT COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS. 7/18, 3:00-4:00pm (EDT), ONLINE AND IN PERSON. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: General Eric Smith, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. Moderator: Seth G. Jones, Senior Vice President, Harold Brown Chair, Director, International Security Program. 

THE TECHNICAL ADVISOR: MICHAEL LINDSAY AND THE CHINESE COMMUNIST QUEST FOR TECHNOLOGY DURING WORLD WAR II. 7/18, 4:00pm (EDT), ONLINE AND IN PERSON. Sponsor: Library of Congress. Speaker: Susan V. Lawrence, Staff Fellow, Kluge Center, Library of Congress. 

NAVIGATING UYGHUR FORCED LABOR PREVENTION ACT IMPLEMENTATION & CHINA’S RESPONSE. 7/18, 5:00-6:00pm (EDT), ONLINE EVENT. Sponsor: US-China Business Council. Speakers: Richard Mojica, Customs and Import Trade Group, Miller & Chevalier; Lester Ross, Partner-in-charge, WilmerHale Beijing. 

SOUTHEAST ASIA INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ROADSHOW. 7/18, 7:00-9:00pm (EDT), ONLINE WEBINAR. Sponsor: USPTO. Speakers: Peter N. Fowler, senior counsel, Office of Policy and International Affairs, USPTO; Marc Mealy, senior vice president-policy, US-ASEAN Business Council; Daniel Kim, Global Asia team lead, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce; Alan Adcock, partner, intellectual property, Tilleke & Gibbins, Bangkok, Thailand; Frederic J. Rocafort, attorney, Harris Bricken, and co-host, Global Law and Business Podcast, Seattle, Washington; Zack Ji, Ph.D., CEO, GS-Tek, Newark, Delaware; Christopher E. Knight, CEO, Everett Knight, Ltd. (Asia Pacific), Bangkok, Singapore; Nhut Phan, brand protection director, Southeast Asia, Nike, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Yihong Ying, director, corporate counsel, intellectual property, Law and Corporate Affairs, Starbucks Corporation; Mark Matsumoto and Jeff Williamson, CBEC Asia; Raquel Cohen, Trade Specialist, Office of Standards and Intellectual Property, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce; Matthew Kohner, regional intellectual property attaché for Southeast Asia, USPTO, U.S. Embassy Bangkok. 

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The Japan-Korea History Wars

Will Not End, For Now

By Daniel Sneider,  Lecturer, International Policy at Stanford University and APP Member

Toyo Keizai, April 30, 2021

Inside the Biden administration, there is a deepening frustration over what is described as a “painful” breakdown of relations between Japan and South Korea. In meeting after meeting, American officials from the President on down are preaching the importance of trilateral cooperation between the United States and its two key allies in Northeast Asia.

That cooperation is a key piece of the Biden administration’s broader strategy to confront China. The administration’s North Korea policy, nearing the end of its review, depends in part on the three countries lining up together.

Publicly, the U.S. extracts ritual statements of support for trilateral coordination, and holds meetings of senior officials, focused on forging a joint response to North Korea, and hopefully China. Privately, senior U.S. officials are pushing Korea and Japan to make real progress in restoring working relations, even to resolve the issues of wartime history that continue to plague their relations. So far, however, there is no evidence of serious talks on the history issues.

The recent decision of the Seoul Central District Court to dismiss a suit by Korean victims of wartime sexual servitude, so-called military comfort women, has generated some hopes that both governments might find a route out of the current impasse.

The South Korean government of President Moon Jae-in has been signaling some flexibility and interest in improving relations. Senior Korean officials have gone out their way to tell their American counterparts that it is the Japanese who are holding up any progress.

The Japanese government has indeed offered a cold response to the Korean signals, arguing that they first need to see actions to shut down the legal challenges over comfort women and forced laborers. Japanese officials have written off the Moon government and place their hopes on a conservative government coming to power next year in South Korea.

Both Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide and President Moon are weakened politically and their room to maneuver is even less than previously.

“It is unlikely that the Korean government would change its positions and suggest mutually agreeable solutions to Japan,” says former South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan, a key bridge between the two countries. The losses by the ruling progressive party in the Seoul and Busan mayoral elections, and Moon’s plummeting popularity, make it highly unlikely there will be a breakthrough until after the presidential election next March, predicts Yu, who previously served as Korean Ambassador to Japan.

The recent Japanese parliamentary by-elections have similarly weakened Suga and made him even more under the sway of hardline conservatives in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who oppose any concessions on wartime history issues. Japanese public opinion, shaped in part by conservative media in Japan, reflects the view that Korea is an unreliable partner.

“Suga has to pay attention to public opinion because the LDP is facing difficulties in the coming election of the House of Representatives this year,” observes Tokyo University Professor Kawashima Shin, an expert on wartime history issues. “If Suga makes any positive response to Moon’s approach, it would be a negative factor for Suga and for the LDP.”

The war for Washington’s favor

At the moment, the two American allies are engaged in a fierce, though undeclared, the war in Washington, trying to convince the new administration to take their side.

The latest exchange of fire took place when Prime Minister Suga visited Washington in April. The attention of Japanese and American media was focused on the discussion of China, and on Taiwan. Most observers missed the rather blunt statements on Korea issued by Suga, first at his joint press conference with Biden and then again in an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

While making a nod toward trilateral cooperation, Suga pointedly pressured the U.S. not to retreat from a commitment to complete denuclearization of North Korea, using a term favored by the Trump administration, calling for “CVID,” or Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization.

Suga’s remarks were a clear effort to head off any move by the Biden administration, after its policy review, to seek an arms control style deal with Pyongyang that would leave its shorter-range missiles, and its existing nuclear arsenal, intact.

He called recent tests of short-range ballistic missiles by the North Koreans a “clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions” and a “threat to the peace and security” of Japan and the region. Negotiations, he said, must eliminate the threat of “ballistic missiles of all ranges possessed by North Korea.”

President Moon, who is heading to Washington in May, responded with an interview with the New York Times. Moon laid responsibility on Donald Trump for the failure of the summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. His message to Biden was to resume direct talks with the North Koreans as early as possible, a goal that is central to Moon’s own political agenda.

The court ruling opens a door – will Suga and Moon walk through it?

Despite the battles for Washington’s favor, the April 21 decision by the Seoul District Court could have a significant positive impact on the history wars. The decision effectively contradicted the decision by a similar level court in early January which had ruled that the Japanese government had to provide compensation to 12 former comfort women, supporting the argument that principles of international human rights overrode claims to exemption from such suits based on state sovereignty.

The April decision in a suit by a separate group of women was in line with established international law, say Korean legal experts and likely to be upheld over the earlier decision.

“The court came back to the classical authentic attitudes on the sovereign immunity issue,” Seoul National University legal scholar Heo Seongwook told me. “Most probably, this conclusion will be maintained at the appeals court.”

In his ruling, Justice Min Seong-Cheol also significantly referred to the 2015 agreement reached by Japan and the previous conservative government of Park Geun-Hye in South Korea to attempt to settle the issue of compensation and apology to the Korean women victims.

That agreement created a Japanese-funded Fund which provided compensation, accepted by two-thirds of the surviving victims, along with an expression of apology. The suits were filed on behalf of supporters of the Korean organization representing those who rejected this settlement.

Justice Min acknowledged that the results of that agreement may not have been “fully satisfactory compared with the pain they had to suffer through in the past,” but that it did have validity as an existing agreement and was a Japanese offer of a “remedy for the violation of rights.”

The progressive government had unilaterally dismantled the 2015 agreement, closing down the operations of the Fund in support of activists who opposed the deal. But following the January court decision, which triggered a harsh response from Tokyo, Moon reversed course slightly. He expressed dismay at the decision and acknowledged that the 2015 agreement remained in force as an official pact.

Moon’s shift seems to have set the stage for the reversal in the District Court. “President Moon’s remarks…indirectly influenced the decision,” says Professor Park Cheol Hee, a prominent expert on Japan at Seoul National University. “Still there is no evidence that Blue House gave any guideline to the court.”

By reaffirming the 2015 agreement, the Korean court and Moon have “opened the door to diplomatic negotiation between Korea and Japan,” says Professor Park. But the obstacles remain considerable. On the Korean side, Moon is reluctant to take the next obvious step and reopen the comfort women fund established in 2015, accepting that as the basis for dealing with those victims who remain to be included.

Japanese official response to the court decision has been extremely cautious, led by the Prime Minister’s Office and the LDP.

“I think that now it depends on Suga,” says former foreign ministry official Togo Kazuhiko, who has been a voice for compromise on history issues. “If Suga sees this verdict as an opportunity, he has a room to move.” And if the April ruling loses on appeal, Suga can always argue that he did his best to improve relations, says Togo.

The other time bomb hanging over this is the potential decision of the Korean courts to dissolve the assets of Japanese corporations which were judged to have to pay compensation to former Korean forced laborers from the wartime period.

That case is legally more solvable as it involves individual plaintiffs and private firms but the Japanese government has pressured the firms not to yield, arguing it is a violation of the 1965 treaty which normalized relations between the two countries and settled, in principle, such wartime claims.

In Japan, there are voices in favor of improving relations with South Korea, echoing American officials who see the strategic importance of bringing Korea in with Japan in the broader response to China. But Suga personally opposes any concessions and shares a deep mistrust of the Moon administration, based on his eight years as Chief Cabinet Secretary to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, says Professor Kawashima.

That leaves Washington waiting for an opening to help repair these damaged relations.

“President Biden fully understands the delicate history issues between Korea and Japan,” former South Korean foreign minister Yu told me. Biden played the role of mediator on these issues during the Obama administration, setting in motion the diplomatic engagement that led to the 2015 agreement, in which Yu played a key role. But conditions may not yet be ripe to repeat that effort.

“I believe President Biden will wait until next year, when a new team is installed in both Korea and Japan and ready for compromise,” the Korean diplomat says, “a compromise for the sake of their legacy and also for the betterment of all involved, including the United States.”

Repeating Past Mistakes in Japan-Korea Reconciliation

by Tom Le and Daphne Yang, Pomona College
Tokyo Review, January 30, 2020.

The Japan-South Korea reconciliation process continues to be hindered by the same three mistakes: a lack of victims’ voices, a lack of ambition, and a lack of long-term commitment. Several agreements, the first dating back to 1965, have failed to sustain positive relations between the two democracies. Only half a year ago, Japan and South Korea entered a costly trade war and considered ending the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). According to a poll conducted before this latest spat, of those holding a negative view of the other side, approximately half of Japanese and three-quarters of Koreans do so because of the “history issue.”

The “Memory ⋅ Reconciliation ⋅ Future Foundation Act” proposed by South Korea’s National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang – the same Moon who was forced to apologize for demanding the Japanese emperor apologize to comfort women – is the most recent attempt to settle the legacy of Japanese colonization. The bill proposes that private corporations in South Korea and Japan would contribute to a foundation to pay victims of forced labor in accordance with the November 2018 South Korea Supreme Court rulings. It is likely to do little to improve relations between Japan and South Korea, far less settle the legacy of WWII finally or irreversibly.

Since relations between the two countries were normalized in the 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations, Japan has issued dozens of apologies and several agreements have been passed to address its wartime atrocities, most notably the 1993 Kono Statement, 1995 Asian Women’s Fund (AWF), 1995 Murayama Statement, and 2015 Comfort Women Agreement. The Memory ⋅ Reconciliation ⋅ Future Foundation Act repeats the same mistakes that not only prevented the 1995 AWF and 2015 Comfort Women from settling the “history problem” but will likely lead to the same backlash among both the publics of both nations once it fails.

The primary public complaint about the 2015 agreement was the lack of representation of comfort women; the new proposed bill repeats this mistake

First, the bill does not include forced laborers in the establishment or operation of the foundation. As outlined in a Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs report, the primary complaint of the public concerning the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement was the lack of representation of comfort women at the negotiating table. Immediately after the 2015 Agreement came into force, Koreans took to the streets in protest, and despondent comfort women in media-filled rooms railed at government officials for ignoring their voices. The new proposed bill has similarly been submitted to the Korean parliament without input from civil society. Moreover, the bill seeks to silence the voices of victims, who would give up their right to litigation if they accept a payout from the foundation. The proposed fund effectively splits the voice of around 1,000 victims involved in or planning to take legal action.

Second, like the 1995 AWF, funding for the foundation will be on a voluntary basis from public and private corporations. One of the main criticisms of the 1995 AWF was that it was not financed by Japanese taxes, and thus, could not be considered official compensation. Although donations may be a good reflection of what Japanese society today believes, by allowing and encouraging South Korean corporations and civilians to voluntarily donate as well, the bill removes the direct historical responsibility of the Japanese government and corporations from the reconciliation process.

Third, the Memory ⋅ Reconciliation ⋅ Future Foundation Act is billed as a “catch-all” proposal that will address all the issues concerning Japan’s wartime atrocities through financial compensation. The Korean public was furious at the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement because it sought to settle one single issue “finally” and “irreversibly.” One can expect a stronger reaction when it is the Korean government that is using similar language. In a poll conducted immediately after the act was announced, the majority of the South Korean public opposed the bill in every age group except for respondents over 60. According to a poll run by the Korea Institute of Research (commissioned by Moon Hee-sang’s office), 82.3% of South Korean citizens did not believe that Japanese companies would step up and provide the funds.

From Japan’s side, there is little incentive to reach an agreement that the other side can simply abandon so quickly

Government leaders have failed in the reconciliation process due to a combination of personal failings and circumstances beyond their control. Both governments have inherited decades of failed treaties and ineffectual apologies and face significant pressure to “win,” which may not actually involve an agreement or reconciliation. Yet, their solutions continue to be elite-driven, non-transparent, and short-sighted.

Following the collapse of the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement, “apology fatigue” was at an all-time high in Japan. There are no incentives to come to an agreement if the other side can choose to abandon the resulting agreement after less than a year. The legacies of WWII can only be addressed in an education-based and future-oriented agreement that includes victims at the negotiating table.

Moreover, inter-generational trauma requires solutions that last well beyond the date where foundation funds run dry. Beyond financial compensation, the governments should establish a foundation to educate the public on the decades-long reconciliation process that has been costly for both sides. This would mean Japan should offer a grand gesture to show remorse, possibly a memorial of its own acknowledging the victims – while for South Korea, it requires a reevaluation of the homespun narrative that Japan has never issued a “genuine” apology and an acceptance that it too has played a significant role in failing to come to terms with the past.

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Tom Le is as an Assistant Professor of Politics at Pomona College, specializing in Japanese security policy, war memory and reconciliation, East Asia regionalism, and militarism norms. Le's work has been published by the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs and the Journal of Asian Studies, as well as in popular outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Hill, and The Diplomat. Le received a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine and BAs in History and Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is a research associate at the PRIME Institute at Meiji Gakuin University, a CSIS US-ROK NextGen Fellow, and an AFIHJ Next Generation Fellow. His work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Japan Foundation, The Korea Foundation, CION Trust, and JASSO.

Daphne Yang is a senior at Pomona College majoring in International Relations with an Economics minor. She studies East Asian security issues with a socioeconomic lens, and has published works in Diplomatic Courier, The Korea Times, and International Policy Digest.

Glimmers Of Hope For Japan-Korea Relations

by Daniel Sneider, Lecturer, International Policy at Stanford University and APP Member
Toyokeizai Online, January 2, 2020

This past year marked the lowest point in relations between Japan and its neighbor, South Korea, since the two countries established diplomatic relations more than a half century ago. As the new year dawns, however, there are glimmers of hope that the tide is slowly turning.

The meeting in China between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in China at least demonstrated that channels for dialogue remain open. Before that, trade officials met in Tokyo to discuss the export control measures imposed by both sides, followed by a small step from Japan to ease restrictions on key exports to Korea related to semiconductor manufacture.

And with the threat of a court order to seize the assets of Japanese companies looming, Korean legislators are discussing a compensation plan for former forced laborers that might offer a way out of that difficult issue of wartime justice.

This is a fragile process that could break down in the blink of an eye, but informed actors in both Korea and Japan see reasons for guarded optimism.

“Our bilateral relations now cannot get worse and there is a growing consensus among our people that Korea cannot afford to let its relations with Japan break down completely,” former South Korean Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Tokyo, Yu Myung Hwan, told me. “I think we have passed the lowest point,” says Yu, who has been a key figure in Japan-Korea relations.

Still, Yu warns, “one time-bomb is left – when, and how, the seized assets of Japanese companies might be cashed in.” For now, Korean courts have only taken preliminary steps to sell those assets, but if they actually move to do so, “Abe will have to respond likewise and that will surely provoke another downward spiral in relations,” he predicts.

The lawyers for the Korean laborers who brought the suit claiming compensation remain in a dialogue with the Moon administration, delaying the next steps. But this will not last forever – “I am not fully optimistic at this point,” Yu told me.

A veteran Japanese journalist specializing in foreign affairs takes a somewhat less upbeat view of where things may be headed. “I hope this bilateral relationship has hit the bottom, but I don’t find a solid reason to say so,” the senior editor told me. “I am one of the guys who predict that this cold war between Abe and Moon is likely to go on in a mild way next year.”

The political dimension
For now, there is a cease-fire in this crisis. But neither Moon nor Abe are highly motivated to find an early solution.

The impact on Japan from the economic boycott in South Korea, most visible in the dramatic drop in Korean tourists coming to Japan, is still minor. Combined with pressure from the U.S. to ease tensions, “Abe has some incentive to move,” says Tokyo University Professor and foreign policy expert Ryo Sahashi. But there is very little potential political upside in improving relations for the Japanese leader, especially among conservative voters and lawmakers.

“Diplomacy with South Korea only costs him political capital,” Sahashi told me, “he doesn’t gain anything from it.” Still, Abe seems unlikely to take further steps to provoke a Korean reaction, as happened with the export controls imposed last summer.

Moon, for his part, faces crucial elections to the South Korean National Assembly in April. The possible return to serious tensions in relations with North Korea potentially undermines support for the ruling progressive party which has put North-South Korea engagement at the top of its agenda. A possibly unpopular move to reach a compromise with Japan on the forced laborer issue might be too much of a risk for Moon. But a worsening of relations would also not help Moon, observers believe.

“The upcoming parliament election in April 2020 will be an Armageddon for the government party since it will be a sort of midterm evaluation of the incumbent Moon administration,” observes Yu, a veteran diplomat. “And the worsening of the relationship with Japan would not help before the election unless Japan provokes further in a nasty way. But I think Abe wouldn't do that again. I believe that after the general election next year the Korean government will be more flexible in dealing with Japan.”

Until then, however, Moon continues to be very cautious. He has not embraced the effort to find a compromise solution to the forced laborers problem led by South Korean National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang. Speaker Moon introduced legislation to establish a foundation formed by voluntary contributions from both Korea and Japanese companies, and individuals, to compensate the former laborers.

The proposed fund is modeled on the German Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation, formed in 2000, which paid compensation to all those forced to work in German mines and factories during the war. It was funded by both the German government and by the German firms who used that labor, just as Japanese companies did during the war.

The model is cited by many experts, but the decision of the Moon government to dismantle a similar fund created to compensate the so-called Comfort Women in the 2015 agreement between Japan and South Korea undermines the viability of this proposal.

The new proposal does not yet have the support of those who filed suit in Korean courts, and their lawyers. The Abe administration has also been cautious toward this proposal, even though it does not demand either official Japanese funds or a formal apology to the victims.

“Speaker Moon's idea is not perfect,” notes Tokyo University’s Sahashi. “It would be better if the fund was divided equally between South Korean companies, the South Korean government and Japanese companies. But even this solution would face domestic criticism in both countries. Still, I can’t imagine any other option.”

South Korea’s former foreign minister Yu, who played a key role in setting up the Comfort Women foundation, agrees with this assessment. “Speaker Moon's proposal is not a bad idea at all if it can be passed as a bill in the parliament and Japan is willing to participate in ‘donating’ money to the Fund,” he says.

But Yu worries that the Assembly leader does not yet have sufficient support in the legislature to pass the bill and may have higher priorities, such as passage of an election law and a reform of the prosecution system. “I wonder whether he can spare some of his political assets to push through his idea to resolve the ‘war-time forced labor issue’ once and for all,” he told me.

Behind this lurks the status of the 1965 treaty which normalized diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea and dealt with the problem of compensation for forced laborers and others through a large transfer of Japanese grants and loans. Those funds were used to finance the industrialization of South Korea, though limited individual compensation was also paid out.

The progressives in South Korea have long challenged the legitimacy of this treaty, arguing it was forced on Korea by the United States and was the creation of a ‘pro-Japanese’ regime led by military leader Park Chung-hee.

The Japanese government continues to insist this issue was settled by the treaty and proposed to deal with the current crisis through a third-party arbitration process set out in that treaty. The Moon government has so far sidestepped whether they still feel bound by the 1965 treaty, carefully avoiding triggering the question of renegotiating the entire treaty.

Even Korean scholars who have been critical of Japan question this ambiguous position taken by the Blue House. The Korean government should clearly communicate through official channels that it will respect the treaty, Professor Chung Jae-jeong, the former head of the Northeast Asia History Foundation, said in a recent interview. “This will facilitate negotiations on how to resolve the current disputes,” Professor Chung said. “I think we as a country have passed a stage where we approach state-to-state conflicts emotionally. They should be handled with professional judgment and knowledge.”

The geopolitics of the Japan-South Korea dispute
The prospects for improvement in Japan-South Korea relations will undoubtedly be affected by the broader geostrategic environment in Northeast Asia. If tensions rise again with North Korea, that may drive Japan and South Korea closer together, though it will not in itself overcome the underlying historical issues.

American policy makers have persistently urged the two countries, both allied to the U.S., to focus on their shared security interests. And that pressure at least yielded some results in the Korean decision to back off from abandoning the defense intelligence sharing agreement. But the forces of nationalism in both countries tend to overwhelm those appeals to joint security interests.

The withdrawal of the U.S. from its traditional leading role as the guarantor of security in Northeast Asia has left Japan and South Korea increasingly on their own in managing out these long-standing tensions. And it has left open the door for China to assert its leadership role, as took place at the trilateral summit in Chengdu. President Moon, speaking at the summit, evoked the “common destiny” binding the three countries together.

“This is a new trial for both countries to explore their own capability to sustain and develop the East Asia order which has long kept the stable environment since the end of World War Two,” comments the senior Japanese foreign affairs journalist.

“In that sense, the trilateral dialogue framework of Sino-ROK-Japan should have more and more implication for the future to come. I have no doubt Japan’s bond with the US will stay firm and solid regardless of whatever chemistry will emerge in the Sino-Korean-Japan relationship. But when it comes to South Korea’s position, frankly, I am much less certain.”

Northeast Asia unraveling amid US retreat

Bolton and Kono

We are left now watching events unfold in East Asia in the absence of American leadership and a cogent strategy

By Daniel Sneider, Stanford University lecturer, Asia Policy Point member, and associate editor of Washington’s Nelson Report, in which this article originally appeared on July 25, 2019. 

While Americans become increasingly preoccupied with their own domestic descent into dysfunction and political civil war, the rest of the world moves on without them.

The United States is not responsible for much of what we see happening in the world, but the consequences of American retreat from leadership are visible and disturbing. Nowhere is that more evident than in East Asia.

At one moment, we are witnessing multiple challenges to the international order that has maintained peace and stability in the region. Japan and South Korea, the anchors of the American security system, are now locked into a political and economic war without any end.

China and Russia staged an unprecedented joint air patrol right down the heart of the Sea of Japan, simultaneously challenging South Korea, Japan and the United States. North Korea tested a new short-range ballistic missile system, with a message aimed at the US-South Korea military alliance and the happy talk about a new Trump-Kim bargain.

Meanwhile, off in the corner, the Chinese regime is letting both Taiwan and Hong Kong know that the days of “one country, two systems” are almost over.

The Japan-South Korean tensions continue to ratchet upwards. Yesterday at the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, the two governments exchanged nasty accusations over Japan’s export control measures aimed at supplies of key chemicals from Japanese firms to Korean tech companies.

No talks are scheduled and Japan could move as early as next week to remove Korea from the “white list” that allows for simplified export procedures. Removal would potentially disrupt the entirety of bilateral trade. As the Wall Street Journal reports, American tech firms issued a warning that this “could wreak long-term damage across an already-buckling supply chain.”

Tokyo has massively miscalculated the response to these measures, hiding behind the transparently less than credible claim that this has nothing to do with the long-standing disputes over wartime history issues.

But the Moon Jae-in administration in Seoul lit the fire a year ago by tearing up the 2015 Comfort Women agreement and pushing the Korean courts to move ahead with a decision demanding compensation from Japanese firms for Korean forced laborers and their descendants, potentially a massive claim on the companies’ assets that would effectively cripple bilateral investment.

The impact on security relations is already clear. Quiet cooperation between the militaries of both countries, with US facilitation, was already impaired by an incident last December when a South Korean frigate painted a Japanese patrol aircraft with its fire control radar.

Privately American military officials in the region worry that an exchange of actual fire is now possible. Now Seoul is threatening to withdraw from the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), an intelligence sharing agreement that was brokered by the US. It provides a formal structure for very important cooperation, including the direct exchange of tracking data on North Korean ballistic missile firings.

The impact can be seen in the reaction to the Russian intrusion into Korean airspace and the Sino-Russian joint patrol. These should have been seen as serious challenge to both South Korea and Japan. Instead, both governments spent more time airing their rival claims to the islands that the Russians overflew.

Neither side shows any sign of desiring to bring this fight to a halt. The Moon administration mainly works to try to get the US to take its side. Threats to withdraw from GSOMIA are heavy-handed efforts to do this.

Just listen to the words of Hankyoreh, the leftwing daily close to Blue House: “The US continues to maintain a neutral stance on the South Korea-Japan conflict. But if the conflict continues and starts impacting military issues, the US will inevitably lose out. The South Korean government needs to keep hammering on such points to bring the US around to its side.”

The Japanese government, for its part, is also mainly making its case in Washington, counting on the Abe-Trump relationship to keep the Americans from intervening. Unlike Seoul, the Japanese don’t see US mediation as a goal.

But even Japanese foreign policymakers who blame Moon for this fight recognize the severe danger this represents and see little hope for a diplomatic outcome. “I am more inclined to be very pessimistic, and feel that unless and until the relations become much worse and a great many people realize that such a situation actually damages both of us, we cannot expect any improvement in our bilateral relations,” a senior Japanese foreign ministry official told me privately.

Meanwhile, as we know, the Russians and Chinese chose this moment to mount a joint air patrol of four aircraft, including Russian strategic bombers, on a route down between Japan and Korea.

“Such patrols will become a regular feature under a new agreement soon to be signed between Moscow and Beijing,” Dmitri Trenin, the astute analyst of this relationship at the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote. “Russo-Chinese entente grows thicker.”

Trenin has argued in the past that this entente is not yet an alliance and both countries have different agendas and interests. But both share a common goal in diminishing the US presence and in establishing a new balance of power.

The conservative Seoul daily Chosun Ilbo pointed a finger at the Moon administration for encouraging both Russia and China “to ride roughshod over it” by seeking itself to overturn the Cold War order in the region that had previously united Japan, South Korea and the US against North Korea, China and Russia.

The North Korean regime sensed the same opportunity. The test of two new short-range ballistic missiles was meant to accompany a demand that Seoul back off from a planned joint military exercise with the US At the same time, Pyongyang was sending a message to Washington that if Trump wants a deal to show off on the campaign trail, he will have to come bearing the gifts they demand.

The message was delivered in typical fashion – a sudden decision to call off a trip by North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho to the ASEAN Regional Forum in Bangkok next week, where he was expected to meet Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

As all these events were unfolding, National Security Advisor John Bolton and his Asia director Matt Pottinger traveled for two days to Tokyo and Seoul. There was an expectation, one fed by the NSC itself, that the administration was prepared to seriously intervene into the Japan-ROK dispute. “We’re on it,” this writer was told at senior levels.

Mr. Bolton did raise the issue in his talks in both capitals but he also decidedly avoided any talk of American mediation, on any level, preferring to tell both sides that they should settle their problems. This is not inconsistent with past American responses to these tensions.

“I’ve never had any expectation that Bolton was going to offer to mediate,” Evans Revere, former principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, told me. “My understanding is that the key task for him was to convey in both capitals that the current dispute between Seoul and Tokyo was undermining security cooperation in Northeast Asia, negatively affecting US interests, working to North Korea’s advantage – and that its continuation was not acceptable to the United States.

“In that context, Bolton was probably tasked with telling the Japanese and the Koreans to ‘fix’ it.” Revere believes that without any obvious solution to impose, the main goal was “to convince the disputants that there were limits to US patience.”

In the past, this might have had some effect. “That’s how the game has been played before,” a former senior US official told me, “though that doesn’t mean these guys know what they’re doing or care enough.”

One problem with the Bolton/Pottinger effort is that without the clear backing, in public, of the President or at least the Secretary of State, the private concerns conveyed by Bolton and Pottinger have limited impact. The President, as often happens, undercut them by telling reporters before they left that he had no intention to intervene in the conflict.

Second, simply telling the two sides to fix it ignores the fact that they have simply not shown themselves capable of pulling themselves out of the deep holes they have dug. There are steps that can bring this back from the brink – Japan should not remove Seoul from the white list; Seoul should agree to Japan’s proposal to create an arbitration panel under the 1965 treaty to deal with the dispute over compensation for forced laborers. The US should tell both governments to do this, in unambiguous, even angry, fashion.

Finally, Bolton muddied his message by focusing much more on his efforts to push Japan and South Korea to join in some unspecified, as yet, joint maritime security effort in the Persian Gulf.

The Japanese are highly reluctant to go down this road – it is politically very difficult given the requirement to seek parliamentary approval for any collective security mission and the Japanese believe their role is to encourage diplomatic negotiations between Iran and the United States, as Abe did last month in his visit to Tehran.

The South Koreans hinted they may be willing to join this new coalition of the willing, but for very cynical reasons. Not unlike the decision of the last progressive government to join the US war in Iraq, the Moon administration sees some value in using participation, however nominal, in a Gulf operation to leverage US backing vs Japan and for a new North Korea deal.

We are left now watching events unfold in East Asia in the absence of American leadership and a cogent strategy. All the actors – from Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang to Seoul and Tokyo – feel that reality, and are proceeding on that basis. Meanwhile, Americans are mired in their own mess

Repairing the Past

Comfort Women before US House
of Representatives 2007

Recent attempts at reparations show that World War II is not over 

by Timothy Webster is an Associate Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University

First appeared in The Conversation, May 23, 2019.

World War II ended in 1945.

But the world has never stopped debating its legacy and how to make restitution for the damage done to the war’s victims. Consider some recent events.

In February, the Holocaust Deportation Claims Program, which compensates Jewish survivors of Nazi death camps transported on French trains, doubled its compensation payments, from US$200,000 to nearly $400,000. This makes it the most generous of any of the recent compensatory programs worked out by U.S. and European governments. This one is paid for by the French government, but administered by the U.S. State Department.

In March, a South Korean trial court ordered the seizure of property owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation in South Korea. Such efforts are apparently needed to enforce a November judgment by the South Korean Supreme Court, ordering Mitsubishi to pay $100,000 to each of five Koreans who performed forced labor during the war.

Whether the Koreans will ever see that money, or die before the forfeiture action is completed, remains up in the air.

These are among the latest manifestations of global efforts to review, revise, repair and remember the war – akin to the Nuremberg or Tokyo War Crimes Trials - but for the 21st century.

RESTORING HUMAN DIGNITY

In the 1990s, a renewed interest in human rights, greater access to historical materials and a less polarized international political environment converged to spur reflection on World War II.

In the United States, civil lawsuits emerged as one tool, among many, to probe wartime human rights violations.

Federal courts in New Jersey, New York and California presided over cases against Swiss banks, French insurers, German corporations and even the Austrian government.

Plaintiffs sought wages for unpaid labor, return of looted art, restitution of bank accounts and other assets, and the restoration of their human dignity.

Two cases ended up in the United States Supreme Court. One, in which an elderly refugee mounted a lawsuit to recover family artwork seized by the Nazis, got a Hollywood ending. In “Woman in Gold,” Ryan Reynolds helps Helen Mirren sue Austria to recover a painting by Gustav Klimt.

Most cases did not follow the Hollywood script. Plaintiffs generally lost, either because the claims were too old or already resolved by postwar treaties.

SELECTIVE LEADERSHIP

But that did not dispel the pressure from Jewish organizations or human rights activists to provide reparations.

During President Bill Clinton’s second term (1996-2000), the U.S. government, led by Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, worked with European allies to craft international agreements and reparations mechanisms.

Germany set up a $5 billion fund to compensate wartime forced laborers and slave laborers, and to support projects on history and human rights.

Later, the State Department set up additional programs, including the 2016 Holocaust Deportation Claims Program. The French government still runs the Commission for Reparations of Victims of Spoliation, established in 1999 to process claims about seized property and art.

In East Asia, survivors of World War II human rights abuses have had their day (decades, actually) in court.

Chinese victims of wartime medical experimentation, Korean forced laborers and Filipina “comfort women,” among others, have sued Japan and the Japanese government throughout the Asia-Pacific, including the United States.

But instead of using these lawsuits to reevaluate Japan’s role in World War II – as other programs did for European countries – the U.S. government has either absented itself from these discussions, or challenged the lawsuits on various grounds.

The moral leadership that yielded transatlantic solutions to war responsibility issues in Europe dissolved when the topic emerged in East Asia.

Whereas the Clinton administration, especially Stuart Eizenstat, worked with European officials to set up compensation mechanisms in France, Germany and Switzerland, the administration of President George W. Bush asked U.S. courts to dismiss the East Asian cases.

US SECURITY INTERESTS

South Korea and Japan are America’s closest and most important allies in a region simmering with geopolitical tension, from trade wars with China to nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula. U.S. regional security interests hinge upon the successful coordination of relations among Japan, Korea and the United States.

As an international legal scholar with a background in Asian legal systems, international human rights and international economic law, I believe the United States ignores the Asian tensions over World War II at its peril.

The Obama administration understood this, and tried to persuade both Japan and South Korea to resolve their “difficult historical issues.” Chief among those issues is, of course, making reparations for injuries that Japan visited upon Koreans during the war: from the comfort women system to the forced mobilization of Korean laborers.

But the Trump administration seems unconcerned. It has exhibited indifference or hostility to human rights matters generally, refusing to respond to U.N. investigations about U.S. abuses along the Mexican border, and withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council. Nor does the administration place much stock in international relations or diplomacy, with its attempts to starve the State Department of funding, and belatedly appointing an ambassador to South Korea.

In Asia, civil litigation has emerged as the key method to seek war reparations, though the track record is spotty.

Japanese courts have largely dismissed these suits, although a small handful of Japanese corporations decided to settle the cases and to pay modest amounts of compensation.

That state of affairs changed with recent decisions from the South Korean Supreme Court. The November judgment against Mitsubishi suggests compensation is still possible, at least in certain jurisdictions. Henceforth, Korean courts will almost certainly order other Japanese companies to pay compensation.

But even if plaintiffs win, they might still encounter difficulties enforcing the judgment. Losing Japanese companies may refuse to pay the Korean judgments, requiring Korean courts to seize Japanese assets located in South Korea.

TRANSFORMING THE TRAGIC PAST

The agreements reached in the 1990s and early 2000s by the United States with Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria to provide war reparations are not perfect, but each aspires to transform and repair a tragically forgotten past.

The United States’ failure to do the same in Asia perpetuates a pernicious double standard set after the war.

The United States has the experience, leverage and opportunity to resolve simmering animosities between its allies in Asia, as it did in Europe.

But does it have the ambition?

Human Rights Day and Japan

December 10th was the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (#StandUp4HumanRights!). It is International Human Rights Day.

Human Rights Day is also when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. This year it is of special interest to those who care about the Comfort Women as the honors went to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict and the UN Security Council held an Arria-formula meeting on "Raising the effectiveness of atrocity crimes prevention: role of the United Nations Security Council and its Members".

Few appreciate the role of Asian states and diplomats in forming the Universal Declaration and modern human rights principles. Recent scholarship has highlighted extensive involvement in the 1940s by Asians in identifying war crimes and demanding accountability. Dan Plesch's work on the UN War Crimes Commission (1943-48) [Human Rights after Hitler] outlines how Chinese and Indian lawyers and officials were deeply involved before 1948 in defining crimes against humanity.

The new book by Robin and Bertrand Ramcharan, Asia and the Drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes how the values of the Universal Declaration are very much Asian values and that the future of the world must continue to be inspired by those values. [Springer Press has made the introductory chapter from this book available free on December 10th]

This contradicts the excuses behind the human rights violations in Burma, China, Vietnam, and North Korea. The scholarship also challenges Japanese PM Abe's rationale for revising Japan's "imposed" constitution. From his many statements, he believes the charter's provisions concerning human rights do not accurately reflect the history, culture and tradition of Japan. Concerned critics fear Abe and elements in the LDP want the references to individual liberties removed and replaced with greater loyalties to the state.

The LDP draft published in 2012 confirms as much. Japanese legal expert Larry Repeta analyzes the changes proposed and how they will upend Japanese democracy in Japan's Democracy at Risk – The LDP's Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change (July 22, 2013).

This focus on traditional Japanese values leads critics to worry that a vital supporter of the liberal international order does not actually believe in the universal nature of human rights as a practical matter. Most Westerners belief Constitutional change is only about Japan's war-fighting abilities. This is merely a backdoor. Japan's conservatives, who are currently running the country are most concerned with rejecting the individual liberties and human rights embodied in the current constitution.

Whereas it remains to be seen if Abe can fundamentally alter Japan Constitution, he has succeeded in adjusting the language both Japanese citizens and foreigners use in describing the history of Imperial Japan. On December 1, all the state-involved news agencies, such as JiJi, Kyodo, and NHK as well as MOFA publications and the English-language Japan Times no longer say "comfort women" or "forced laborers." It is now "women who worked in brothels" and "wartime laborers.

These changes not only erase the actual wartime language used by Imperial Japan..."comfort women" is not something imposed postwar by us... it can be argued that the new language somehow sanitizes the imagery of these wartime tragedies and abuses, and thus flies in the face of every aspect of today's Nobel Peace Prize award.

Human rights are tools that human beings designed to protect ourselves from the arbitrary exercise of power. They are not culture specific. Yet with the proposed changes to the Constitution, the Abe government now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of apparently denying a key human element of the liberal international order.

Working to preserve the histories of the Comfort Women, forced laborers, and all of Imperial Japan's victims is important in that it reminds the Japanese people of the consequences of believing that they are unique and do not share values with others. It is less about those harmed than about the abyss that Japan can again fall. It is about democracy under attack and the values of individual dignity it can protect.

Not all in the LDP want to Constitution revised. In fact, the 10th was also the last day of the current Diet session and the party did not submit any constitutional revisions for consideration.

But if Abe continues to revise Japan's wartime past and cleanse the language used to describe the war, his patience might pay off.

For a good history of how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came to be, see: A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Mary Ann Glendon.

Japanese Rightwing's Manipulation of the Western Press

Yoshito Hori

@YoshiHoriGLOBIS

Shingetsu News Agency Intrepid reporter Michael Penn has tracked down a source of the change to the Japan Times history language. We find it unlikely that former Sumitomo executive (his offices are in Sumitomo buildings) Yoshito Hori acted alone or with his own finances. His ties are deep within Japan's alt-right. There are no lone wolves or individual thinkers among them.

Yoshito Hori and the Rightwing Turn of the Japan Times

December 17, 2018, Shingetsu News Agency

by MICHAEL PENN

SNA (Tokyo) — The November 30 “Editor’s Note” in the Japan Times—which appeared to adopt the rightwing Abe administration’s historical revisionist views on Pacific War Comfort Women and forced laborers—came as a shock to many of its readers. As it turns out, it was also a major shock to many of the editors and journalists working in Japan Times own newsroom.

Inside accounts have been clear that the Editor’s Note policy change was driven by Executive Editor Hiroyasu Mizuno, with the consent of a handful of other senior editors. No one else—at least within the Japan Times newsroom—seems to have been in the loop.

The reaction to the Editor’s Note, briefly tacked on to the end of a news article, was enormous, generating international articles and provoking a revolt from some Japan Times staff members and readers.

It also gained the outspoken support of some far right Japanese commentators.

Among those who celebrated the change in the Japan Times editorial line was Yoshito Hori, managing partner, chairman, and CEO of Globis Capital Partners, as well as the founder of the Globis University Graduate School of Management.

Hori’s reaction on Twitter was almost immediate (as if he knew in advance about what was coming). He offered one tweet in Japanese and one in English. His English tweet read, “Japan [Times] has changed the term ‘Forced Labor’ to ‘Wartime laborers’. Brave and right step to avoid misunderstanding. I hope other newspaper will follow.” In the Japanese tweet he singled out the Financial Times as an example of an English-language newspaper that he hoped would follow the Japan Times’ lead.

When The Guardian quickly published an article with a critical tone toward the Japan Times editorial note, Hori was evidently annoyed and he renewed his defense of the paper: “The Guardian should stop using the terms ‘Sex Slaves’ and ‘Forced Labour’, as these words are misleading and mostly wrong. Foreign media should learn from Japan Times’ decision, which changes of terms depict the historical facts better.”

• While Yoshito Hori was hardly the only commentator who jumped to the defense of the rightwing turn of the Japan Times, he had three distinctions easily visible in the public record that set him apart: He is a long-time major advertiser in Japan Times through Globis University; 
• Japan Times had become an official media partner to his G1 Global Conference 2018 only the previous month; 
• and, most of all, Hiroyasu Mizuno, the Japan Times executive editor who had driven the policy change, had come the previous year from—you guessed it—the Globis Corporation, where he had served as Hori’s manager of global communications for almost six years.

What Hori was failing to mention in his tweets to his 115,000 followers was that he is not exactly an appreciative observer from the sidelines, but in fact the previous boss of the man who had engineered the controversial Editor’s Note.

We don’t know exactly what role Hori played in helping Mizuno to get the top job at the Japan Times in June 2017, but it is difficult to believe that the new owners of the Japan Times would have entrusted their newspaper to Mizuno without Hori’s advocacy. For Hori, it must have been quite a coup to get one of his proteges installed as the day-to-day chief of the nation’s leading English-language newspaper.

But it’s also in the public record what Yoshito Hori thinks of the English-language news media in Japan, and what goals he had for it, even before News2u Holdings took over the Japan Times from the Ogasawara family in June 2017.

Hori has spent several years promoting his rather megalomaniacal “100 Actions” program, whose purpose, he explained, is to fundamentally change Japan: “I’ve been gathering the best ideas from G1 Summit, the annual multi-day conference I run, to create a vision for Japan based on 100 necessary reforms,” he wrote earlier this year.

Among the “necessary reforms” Hori preaches are staples of Japanese rightwing thought such as revising the pacifist Constitution, increasing the use of nuclear power, the creation of a “state of emergency” power under which the rights of the people can be restricted, the abolition of prefectures, and an emphasis on the notion that the Japanese people have “responsibilities” to the state, and not simply rights to be protected.

While the entire document is quite an eye-opener in terms of the man’s messianic self-confidence, it is his section about the media that is most relevant to us in our current context.

Namely, one subheading of his “Action 89” calls for the need to “Cultivate a Healthy English-Language Media.” And what exactly is a “healthy” English-language media? In the English-language version of the 100 Actions document, Hori explains: “Japan’s English-language media is a gateway through which foreign nationals can access information about the country. It is unfortunate that the English-language media available in Japan is of poor quality. Since the English-language media is expected to play a leading role in disseminating information throughout the world, it is necessary to fundamentally improve its quality to ensure accurate information is shared so that Japan may be assessed fairly. It is also essential to build relationships with the foreign media. The Japanese English-language media should not only assert Japan’s position as a matter of public relations, as in the past, but should also lead the discussion in the media.”

This passage, published in English about nine months before Hori’s protege took over editorial control of the Japan Times, makes clear that he sees the role of the English-language media not as any kind of watchdog for the public interest or a venue for Japanese and resident foreigners to communicate honestly with one another, but rather as international PR outfits for the government “so that Japan may be assessed fairly.”

This is spelled out even more starkly and in more detail in the Japanese-language version of the document.

The Japan Times itself (then under the previous owners) was singled out for criticism by name: “The English-language media is naturally the portal through which foreigners come to know about Japan. It was very crude as journalists for the managers of the Mainichi Shinbun and the Japan Times to publish articles at variance with the facts, and they did enormous damage to Japan.”

Again, Yoshito Hori’s view is that the mission of the English-language media is only to distribute “correct” information about Japan, thus strengthening the nation’s positive image abroad. This is explicitly a call for journalists to become national propagandists. And it is the man who served as Hori’s own propagandist when he wrote these words—Hiroyasu Mizuno—who now runs editorial affairs for the Japan Times.

The evidence is strong, though not entirely conclusive, that Yoshito Hori is the immediate string-puller behind the rightward turn of Japan Times. Ultimately, however, it is clearly bigger than just one man. It is rather the rightwing political establishment in general that has now got its hooks into what some had regarded as the “last bastion” for independent English-language journalism in Japan. 

In that sense, Hori himself is not much more than a willing puppet.

It has been a clear pattern of the Abe years that many institutions that previously exercised a degree of independent power have been brought in line with the regime’s rightwing policies. Most of the time this has been done through some form of cooptation. It would appear that the Japan Times’ number came up last summer when the Ogasawara family sold the newspaper that they had held for decades. What is occurring now under the new owners was probably planned long ago.

When Mizuno became sufficiently panicked about the strong reaction to the Editor’s Note and wrote a full-page explanation on December 7, Yoshito Hori made no comments on his Twitter feed. He did, however, retweet an article published by the rightwing Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (#561 - We Support Japan Times’ Wise Decision by Hironobu Ishikawa, 2018.12.12)

The author of the piece that Hori recommended to his followers wrote: “Although the Japan Times is the country’s oldest English-language newspaper, founded in 1897, during the time of the previous owners it took an anti-Japanese editorial stance and thus was rightly called the ‘Anti-Japan Times.’ 

Last June it was bought by the online media company News 2u (with Minako Kambara as representative director). Since then, under the editorship of Hiroyasu Mizuno and others, it is adopting a new line. For the foreign journalists in Japan, who are mostly unable to read Japanese and so must use this English-language paper as their information source, the Editor’s Note was unmistakably a huge shock.”