Should President Park Forgive Japan for Its World War II Past?

Here is an article in the Christian Science Monitor that discusses how South Korean President Park Geun-hye could leave a legacy if she was able to work out a reconciliation with Japan over its World War II past:

Yet the South itself is sharply riven on partisan lines, between right and left. Disagreements are profound on how to interpret most of the past, including the autocratic rule of Park’s father, who served as an officer in the Japanese Army. Not until 2012, for example, could political agreement be gained to open the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which sits prominently at the Gwanghwamun Square rotary next to the American embassy. But inside, one subject does garner agreement: Korea’s unhappy occupation by Japan, a time when Koreans were forbidden to learn or speak their language.

“In 1905 Imperial Japan forced the Korean government to sign a treaty depriving it of sovereignty,” reads an opening script. Partway through is a photo display of the so-called “comfort women,” stating: “Women and girls were even victimized as forced laborers at the various places or as the military sexual slaves at the Japanese military camps.”

In fact, comfort women are just the tip of the iceberg for Korea’s outcry. It is Abe’s entire revision of the basic meaning of World War II that bothers Japan’s neighbors, many of whom see the prime minister as also trying to restore the honor of his own family. Abe’s maternal grandfather was Nobusuke Kishi, a minister in Japan’s wartime cabinet who was arrested on war crimes charges and then released.

Indeed, many ideas that purport to restore Japan’s honor and dignity hearken to Meiji era propaganda, which helped form the basis for Japan’s colonial expansion and the war. For example: that Japan in the 1930s was only taking territory to keep it from Americans and other European colonials. That Japan was acting as friend to the nations it invaded. That Japan’s cause was just, and the atom bomb attacks made Japan the war’s victim.

“The problem for us is that Japan’s denial and revisionism is their actual position,” says Choi Jin-wook, president of the Korean Institute for National Unification.  “For them it is truth. They have drifted into believing that they were victims of World War II. For Japan, nothing is remembered. For us, nothing is forgotten.”

Prof. Choi points to another factor: Mounting strains between Japan and China mean that Abe cannot be seen as showing any weakness in northeast Asia.

Today, most historians and a UN investigation argue that some 200,000 women in Asia were forced into sexual slavery during the war. Yet Abe has questioned this, despite previous Japanese official apologies and the payment of compensation starting in 1992. Last November, Abe enabled a commission to “consider concrete measures to restore Japan’s honor with regard to the comfort women.”

The new Japanese position has emerged gradually. But its main points are this: Korean women were not rounded up and forced to service Japanese soldiers, as most history texts outside Japan suggest. Rather, the women were volunteers, willing participants – not coerced by Japan but offered up under Korean management.  [Christian Science Monitor]

In regards to the revisionism the Japanese use to justify the war, the Koreans are absolutely correct.  All one has to do is go to the Yushukan Museum next to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.  The Yasukuni Shrine gets all the attention because it honors all Japanese war dead to include those convicted of war crimes.  Having been there, Yasukuni is nothing compared to the Yushukan Musuem where World War II is called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere War.  Those who put the museum together believe that the Imperial Japanese were liberating Asian nations that were being colonized by Europeans and Americans.  Much of the history depicted at the museum is laughable.

As far as the colonial occupation of Korea I always recommend that people read Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
which dispels much of the myths about the occupation, like the one repeated in the article about not being allowed to speak Korean.  Koreans could speak their native language during the colonial period just not in schools or to hold government positions. People who have spent time in Korea know how much Koreans value education.  The Imperial Japanese understood this too and this was how they hoped to assimilate the Koreans into their culture over time.

As far the comfort women issue I always recommend that people read The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) which provides a lot of facts instead of emotional arguments on this issue.  The facts show that very few Korean women were forcibly conscripted by the Japanese Army to be comfort women.  The vast majority came from Korean brokers who either bought girls from poor families, tricked them, or sometimes kidnapped them to be comfort women.  The fact that after World War II this same system was in place to provide women to be camptown prostitutes for the US military further validates this.  The critics in Japan on the comfort women issue want people to believe they were just prostitutes that the Japanese military did not force into prostitution. With that said the Imperial Japanese would have known that these women were being bought, coerced, or kidnapped making them just as liable for the crime as the Korean brokers.

Considering how repugnant the historical revisionism is in Japan I do not see any way that President Park Geun-hye can reach out to Prime Minister Abe without him first making significant concessions. First of all he should advocate for removing the war criminals names from Yasukuni and come out against the historical revisionism in the Yushukan Musuem.  He cannot force change because they are both private entities, but he can advocate for change which would be positive first step to reconciliation.  If he doesn’t make a significant first step I don’t see how politically President Park can move forward on this issue.