Tag: Japan

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.

The Moon administration has decided that domestic politics is more important than national security:

 South Korea consulted with the United States often and adequately on the fate of a bilateral pact with Japan on sharing military intelligence, Cheong Wa Dae said Friday, as Washington has voiced “strong concern” and “disappointment” over Seoul’s decision to discard the key tool for strengthening trilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia.

“It’s true that the U.S. hoped for the extension of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA),” South Korea’s Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Hyun-chong said in a press briefing.

Thus, he added, it was “natural” for Washington to be disappointed with Seoul’s move, which represents its toughest countermeasure yet against Tokyo’s export curbs.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but what allows the Moon administration to make this decision more easily than it should of, is that they know the U.S. will share with them any pertinent information the Japanese have on North Korea anyway.

This decision allows the Moon administration to show they are “doing something” in response to the trade dispute with Japan, burnish their anti-Japan street cred with the South Korean left, without really giving anything up in return.

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.

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.

In the next few days we should be seeing if the GSOMIA between the ROK and Japan will be extended:

President Moon Jae-in’s move to offer an olive branch to Japan prompted expectations on the extension of a bilateral military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan amid an escalating power game between the neighboring countries.

Stressing that Seoul and Tokyo have continued to engage in security and economic cooperation with Japan, Moon said Thursday, “Better late than never: if Japan chooses the path of dialogue and cooperation, we will gladly join hands. We will strive with Japan to create an East Asia that engages in fair trade and cooperation.”

Moon’s remarks at the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, during the 74th Liberation Day celebration, came eight days before the deadline to notify Japan on whether to extend the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). The pact is a symbol of trilateral security cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States in the region against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, amid a series of North Korea’s launches of alleged new types of short-range missiles in recent weeks.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Great job by these U.S. Marines who immediately helped this Japanese man impaled with a spear gun:

Two Iwakuni-based Marines were lauded Tuesday for aiding a Japanese man who was injured while spear fishing near the air station on July 27.

Cpls. Jose Castrobaez and Raekwon Johnson — C-130J engine mechanics from Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152 — were flying drones on the bank of the Nishiki River near the Kintaikyo Bridge when a friend of the injured man asked the Marines for help, the pair told Stars and Stripes on July 31.

“We met these guys who were having their own barbecue,” Castrobaez said. “They invited me to go swimming with them. I believe they were practicing how to spear fish, and the next thing you know I was doing my own thing and they told me, ‘Hey our buddy needs help.’”

Castrobaez walked over to investigate and saw a spear sticking out of the man’s torso.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is all very predictable that President Moon would make the claim that Japan’s trade restrictions is about trying to stop South Korea’s economic development:

Last week, Tokyo removed Seoul from its “white list” of more than two dozen nations eligible for simplified customs procedures in buying strategically sensitive materials. Moon has characterized the move as part of Japan’s attempt to prevent South Korea from further developing its economy.

“Japan can never block the leap of our economy,” Moon said. Its export curbs will rather serve as a “catalyst” for South Koreans’ resolve to build economic power, he added.

Moon pointed out that the Japanese economy is superior to South Korea’s in size and domestic market. If a peace economy is realized through economic cooperation between the two Koreas, South Korea would overtake Japan at a stretch, Moon said.

Despite tumults in inter-Korean relations or Pyongyang-Washington talks, he added, South Koreans shouldn’t be easily pessimistic about a peace economy or give up efforts toward it.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the only reason Japan imposed the trade restrictions was because of the Moon administration’s cancelling of the comfort women agreement and threatening to confiscate assets of Japanese companies. None of trade restrictions would be in place by Japan if the Moon administration abided by past agreements signed between Japan and Korea resolving financial liability for past Imperial Japanese actions.

As far North Korea being an economic growth engine that can replace Japan’s importance to the South Korean economy, good luck with that because that will only happen after the Kim regime is gone.