Category: Japan

It will be interesting to see how the IOC rules on the “Rising Sun” flag at next year’s Olympics:

South Korea has formally asked the International Olympic Committee to ban the Japanese “rising sun” flag at next year’s Tokyo Games, calling it a symbol of Japan’s brutal wartime past and comparing it with the Nazi swastika.

South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Wednesday said it sent a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach expressing “deep disappointment and concern” over Japanese plans to allow the flag in stadiums and other facilities during the 2020 Olympics.

South Korean Olympic officials last month urged the local organizing committee to ban the flag, but Tokyo organizers responded by saying it was widely used in Japan, was not considered a political statement and “it is not viewed as a prohibited item.”

The flag, portraying a red sun with 16 rays extending outward, is resented by many South Koreans, who still harbor animosity over Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is another area impacted by the current trade dispute between Korea and Japan, the hiring of South Koreans in Japan:

Song Min-su, a Japanese major in his final year at Hannam University, south of Seoul, has watched in dismay as a dispute between South Korea and Japan over wartime forced labor has spiraled into a damaging political and economic row.

Song, 25, has been pursuing his dream of working in Japan. With historic labor shortages in Japan, he had been confident he would avoid the tough job search many of his peers faced at home in South Korea, where youth unemployment is growing.

But curbs in Japan on the exports of high-tech materials to South Korea have escalated a bitter diplomatic feud between the neighbors, sparking boycotts that have hit the sales of Japanese cars, beer and other goods in South Korea, as well as travel to Japan.

“It will not only get harder to find a job in Japan, but the current sentiment will also make things more difficult to find a job in Korea with the use of my Japanese major,” Song said.

South Korea’s relations with former colonial ruler Japan have long been testy, with Tokyo having cited a dispute over court rulings related to forced wartime labor during World War II as a factor that led to tighter export controls implemented in July.

South Korea responded by stripping Japan of favored trading nation status and scrapping an intelligence-sharing pact.

The dispute has derailed a surge in the hiring of highly educated South Korean graduates by Japanese companies in recent years, forcing job seekers, employment consultants and the Seoul government to rethink Japan as a place to work. (………..)

With unemployment at a 26-year-low, Japan was the most popular overseas place to work for Koreans in 2014 and 2016-2018, figures from Human Resources Development Service of Korea show. Japan was the destination for nearly one-third of 5,783 South Korean graduates who found jobs overseas last year under government programs, more than triple the number seen in 2013.

But last month, the Labor Ministry canceled a job fair focused on Japan and Southeast Asia for late September that would have been the largest organized by the government, blaming the strained ties.

Another job expo held by the Korea-Japan Cooperation Foundation for Industry and Technology in mid-July, also with a focus on jobs in Japan, received 20 percent fewer participants than its previous fairs, an official said.

South Korea’s Labor Ministry is planning the second of its biannual global job fairs in November, but instead of focusing on jobs in Japan, as it did last year, it plans to broaden the list of countries.

Japan Times

You can read more at the link, but with already high youth unemployment in South Korea, it seems like the Korean government would rather have people unemployed than working in Japan.

Notice how the family members of U.S. POW’s used as forced laborers in Japan are not launching lawsuits, demanding compensation, and wanting normalization treaties with Japan thrown away:

The daughter of a Marine Corps veteran got an apology from Mitsubishi Materials Corp. during a visit Wednesday to the site of a mine where the veteran worked as a prisoner during World War II.

George Burlage, a member of the 4th Marine Regiment, was captured on Corregidor in May 1942 and spent time in prisoner of war camps in the Philippines and Taiwan before traveling to Japan in a “hell ship” prisoner transport.

The Visalia, Calif., native ended the war working at a lead and zinc mine operated by Mitsubishi Mining in northeast Japan, according to his biography provided by the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.

This week, his daughter Georgianne Burlage, 64, of Denton, Texas, traveled to her dad’s old POW camp, now a tourist attraction called Hosokura Mine Park in Sendai, as part of a trip for eight children of American POWs arranged by the Japanese government.

Some 27,000 U.S. troops were captured by Japan during the war and suffered in hellacious conditions at the hands of their Japanese captors: torture, starvation, disease, exposure and the continual deaths of their brothers in arms. About 40% percent of the POWs perished — 1,115 of them after being sent to Japan to work as forced laborers at more than 100 camps run by approximately 60 companies. (………)

“Officials from Mitsubishi met us and formally apologized to me for what happened to my father,” she said in a phone interview Thursday. “That meant a lot to me. They were very gracious.” (…….)

Despite his ordeal, her father hadn’t expressed animosity toward the Japanese people and remained philosophical about his time in captivity, she said.

“They were mistreated but he always said it was 40 months of his life. He didn’t let it ruin the rest of his life,” she said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on Japan’s other island dispute:

Japan plans to bolster defenses around its disputed southern island chain by creating a specialized police force that will respond to any incursions in the East China Sea.

The news was first reported Monday by Japan public broadcaster NHK, which cited police sources. The Okinawa-based law enforcement unit will be trained in border security tactics and deployed in the next Japanese fiscal year, which begins in April.

The move marks the first time Japanese police will be called to respond to territorial incursions near the Senkaku islands. The uninhabited, resource-rich chain between Okinawa and Taiwan are controlled by Japan but claimed by Taiwan and China, which refers to them as Diaoyu. (…….)

“The National Police Agency believes that there should be some police expertise to respond to [incursions] and they decided to place a unit in Okinawa,” the report said. “The [unit’s] members will be carrying sub-machine guns and are highly trained in case the trespassers are armed.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Chosun Ilbo column says ROK is losing it's long term Jaanese supporters in Japan due to Moon Jae-in's anti-Japanism drive. It also says Japanese citizens even think economic sanctions on ROK are OK to proceed. It appears SKorea crossed line for no return.https://t.co/eV0LSyywsI

— bmk218 (@bmk218) August 25, 2019

I wonder if this is something we will eventually see happen at all South Korean subway stations as well:

To prevent drunken people falling off platforms or being hit by trains, railway operators across Japan are turning benches at their stations sideways to the tracks.

The move is driven by a study that showed that moving them perpendicular to tracks could be the difference between life and death for passengers who have had one too many.

West Japan Railway Co. (JR West)’s Safety Research Institute examined security camera footage in 2014 of 136 inebriated people who fell onto the tracks and made contact with trains.

It found that 60 percent fell after suddenly standing up from benches and elsewhere and then heading straight toward the tracks. The result shattered the common notion that most such accidents are caused by people standing or walking too close to the platform’s edge.

About 25 percent of the accident victims, the second largest number, stood or sat motionless on the edge of platforms and then fell, while only 15 percent tottered and lost their footing.

Asahi Shimbun

You can read more at the link.

This is what the Japanese media is claiming that the Korean Blue House is claiming is not true:

 The United States is committed to maintaining close relationships with both South Korea and Japan, the State Department said Friday amid reports that Washington’s top diplomat expressed his support for Tokyo’s view on the issue of wartime forced labor.

Japanese media have reported that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently agreed with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono’s assertion that all matters of compensation related to Tokyo’s past use of forced labor were settled under a 1965 deal normalizing ties between South Korea and Japan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

KBS World Radio has highlighted a Japanese daily’s editorial that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should repeat apologies about the actions of Imperial Japan:

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper has called on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration to express regret over the country’s past doings in order to improve relations with South Korea.

In an op-ed Saturday, the daily said that Korea should not be given the cold shoulder. It said the Abe administration is regarded as being passive in reflecting on Japan’s past and there lies the indelible distrust Korea has toward Japan.

The op-ed said the Abe government must again clarify its historical views related to the Korean Peninsula in an effort to defuse this distrust.

The commentary went on to propose holding talks for the Japanese government to express its view on history and also at the same time to discuss a renewed assessment by the Seoul government regarding the two countries’ 2015 agreement on the wartime sex slavery issue.

The newspaper cited past statements issued by top Japanese officials in 1993 and 2010 that acknowledged the forced nature of the sexual enslavement and apologized for Japan’s colonial rule of Korea.

The paper said that if Prime Minister Abe demonstrates an attitude respectful of these past statements, Tokyo can be more persuasive in demanding Seoul to keep its promises.

KBS World Radio

Now what the KBS World Radio article does not say is that the Asahi Shimbun editorial also said that Moon administration should honor past agreements signed between the two countries:

First, he should appreciate and honor the 2015 bilateral agreement on the comfort women issue negotiated by the leaders of the two countries to settle the issue “finally and irreversibly.”

The Moon administration’s argument that the agreement negotiated by then South Korean President Park Geun-hye is flawed does not justify its nullification. If a country breaks such a formal agreement with another, mutual trust cannot be maintained.

Asahi Shimbun

Essentially what the Asahi Shimbun editorial states is that each year the Japanese government should recognize the wrong doings of Imperial Japan and that South Korea should honor past agreements signed between the two countries.

This course of action will not work because South Korean leftists and even some on the right like having the anti-Japan issue available to deflect public attention from domestic political issues. For example right now the South Korean economy is doing poorly and the Moon administration’s engagement policy with North Korea is failing. Does anyone think it is any coincidence they are promoting anti-Japan issues right now?

The other problem with this course of action is that there is apology fatigue in Japan. Here is what a seperate editorial in the Asahi Shimbun had to say:

But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe again made no mention of such remorse in his speech at the memorial service this year. Abe once used the word in his speech at the ceremony for 2007, when he was serving his first tenure as prime minister.

Ever since Abe began his second stint as prime minister in 2012, however, he has stopped short of referring to Japan’s “remorse” over the war or the harm it caused to neighboring countries.

Instead, he has talked about his strong desire to allow young Japanese to stop apologizing for the past war. In his statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, he said, “We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”

But we can build relations with other countries that no longer require such apologies on our part only if our political leaders, our representatives, keep demonstrating their commitment to facing up to dark chapters of our history and reflecting sincerely on lessons from history.

Asahi Shimbun

I think it is pretty clear that Prime Minister Abe is trying to normalize the status of Japan and not be a country that is continuously apologizing for the wrongs of Imperial Japan. He probably has correctly deduced that giving more apologies is not going to do anything to change the anti-Japan political dynamic in South Korea where their past apologies have been criticized as being insincere.

The Abe administration now is trying to take a Chinese like approach instead, with economic punishment to see if that will get the Moon administration to comply with past agreements. I guess we will see over time if this has any effect at changing the current political dynamics in both countries.

I think the Japanese are trying to derail the Moon administration’s WTO complaint by showing that their process for extra inspections on certain exports is doable and not a trade restriction:

Japan said Thursday it has granted its first permit for a South Korea-bound shipment of chemicals to produce high-tech materials under Tokyo’s new export requirement that has increased tensions with Seoul.

Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko made a rare announcement of the approval, saying that officials determined that the transaction raised no security concerns. The move is apparently meant to calm South Korean anger over Tokyo’s export curbs and show there is no trade ban in place.

Japan imposed stricter controls on three key materials — fluorinated polyimides, photo resists and hydrogen fluoride — that are used mainly by South Korea’s semiconductor industry as of July 4. The rules also downgrade South Korea’s trade status beginning later this month.

Japanese chemical manufacturers have expressed concerns that case-by-case inspections may prolong the approval process and hold up production for their customers.

The first approval came after about a month, faster than the standard 90 days.

“The permit merely demonstrates that export licensing by the Japanese government is not arbitrary, and is granted to any legitimate transactions that pass strict inspections,” Seko told reporters. “The step we took recently is not an export ban.”

Associated Press

You can read more at the link, but the message Prime Minister Abe could be sending is that these extra inspections are an annoyance to Korean companies just like the Moon administration’s attempt to seize the assets of Japanese companies in South Korea is an annoyance to them.

Prime Minister Abe claiming the current trade dispute with South Korea is only about national security concerns is about as believable as Japanese whaling for scientific research:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday that the main cause of escalating tensions between Japan and South Korea is a loss of trust over court rulings ordering Japanese companies to compensate South Koreans for forced labor during World War II.

Japan has imposed export controls on key materials for South Korea’s semiconductor industry and moved to downgrade the country’s trade status. It has insisted that the measures were related to national security concerns and were not in retaliation for the court rulings, which allowed the freezing of assets of three Japanese companies in South Korea to provide the compensation money.

Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony until the end of the war, and insists that all compensation issues were settled under a 1965 agreement normalizing ties.

Stars & Stripes

Prime Minister Abe probably has to say this is about national security concerns for legal reasons, but his is how Abe is rationalizing it:

Abe said last month that it is natural to assume that South Korea would fail export control promises because it already has broken the wartime compensation agreement.

You can read more at the link.