A congressional delegation led by U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi met with Korean leaders including President Park Geun-hye on Thursday in Seoul, where they discussed regional and bilateral issues, particularly the outstanding historical issues between Korea and Japan.
The bipartisan congressional delegation arrived in Korea for a two-day trip, part of its five-nation Asia tour. The 10-member team included Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel and Sander Levin and Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick.
During their meeting at the Blue House, President Park explained to the delegation the urgency of resolving the issues concerning Korea’s “comfort women,” a term used for the women Japan coerced into sexual slavery during World War II.
Park pointed out that the victims are now elderly – some reaching 90 years old – and that the clock was ticking, a Blue House official said.
Pelosi replied that the issues needed to be resolved for the sake of women’s rights, the official said.
Tokyo’s refusal to officially apologize for forcibly recruiting thousands of young women, mostly Koreans, into military brothels during World War II has long been a key point of contention between Seoul and Tokyo. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link,but I wonder if these representatives know that the Japanese government has already apologized multiple times in regards to the comfort women issue. Here for example is the apology that Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato made back in 1992:
The Government again would like to express its sincere apology and remorse to all those who have suffered indescribable hardship as so-called “wartime comfort women”, irrespective of their nationality or place of birth. With profound remorse and determination that such a mistake must never be repeated, Japan will maintain its stance as a pacifist nation and will endeavor to build up new future-oriented relations with the Republic of Korea and with other countries and regions in Asia.
As I listen to many people, I feel truly grieved for this issue. By listening to the opinions of people from various directions, I would like to consider sincerely in what way we can express our feelings to those who suffered such hardship. [Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan]
I wonder if this Congressional delegation knows that Abe already apologized over the comfort women issue all the way back in 2007 as well in Newsweek magazine:
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday expressed regrets that his country’s military forced women into sexual slavery during World War II.
The remark, made in an interview with a weekly U.S. news magazine on the eve of his visit to the United States, may have been aimed at mending fences. The premier has been criticized by many countries for claiming there is no evidence that the Japanese military took any part in the forced recruitment of the so-called comfort women to serve its troops who invaded Asian countries.
“As Japan’s prime minister, I’m extremely sorry that they were made to endure such pain,” Abe told Newsweek. The Japanese leader reiterated that his government respected and stood by a statement by former Chief Cabinet Minister Yohei Kono in 1993 that apologized for the Japanese military’s involvement in the use of women as sexual slaves.
There is no argument from me that Prime Minister Abe and some of the people around him have made insensitive comments in the past in regards to the comfort women, but they have maintained all prior apologies made by the government of Japan. Is the standard now that every Prime Minister in Japan has to apologize for World War II crimes when they take office? Even when they take office for a second time like Abe has after already making a prior apology? This is why the Japanese public I think has reached apology fatigue and support Abe on this issue. .
If the people criticizing Japan really cared about women’s right they would instead be directing their outrage towards China which currently maintains a modern day comfort woman system using North Korean refugees who are coerced into becoming prostitutes. Likewise if Abe was serious about resolving the comfort women issue he would make Japan into a champion of women’s rights by advocating for the North Korean refugees currently being used as a modern day comfort women. Instead 10 years from now the same people will probably still be arguing over who needs to apologize for what while the modern day comfort women system continues.
The file photo shows Japanese Emperor Hirohito (R) reading an address for a dinner party in Tokyo on Sept. 6, 1984, held in honor of a state visit to Japan by then South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan. The address contained wordings to express regret over Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Diplomatic documents released by the South Korean foreign ministry on March 30, 2015, show that Japan believed in 1984 that it was “inevitable” for its emperor to make comments that express regret over its wartime wrongdoing. (Yonhap)
The Stars & Stripes has this sad story of a sailor trying to find this daughter who disappeared with her mother in Japan 40 years ago:
James Walker with his Japanese girlfriend, Tomie, and daughter, Kim at their apartment near Atsugi in 1969. Walker lost touch with his Japanese family after being sent to Vietnam. Nearly four decades later, he is still searching for them. Courtesy James Walker
It’s been 45 years since James Walker went to war in Vietnam, leaving behind his daughter and her mother in Japan.
The young sailor thought they’d be reunited once he got back from deployment on the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany. When the letters he wrote to his young family were returned marked “wrong address” Walker realized something was wrong. Almost four decades later, he’s still searching for them. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but hopefully Mr. Walker is able to find his lost daughter.
Shown is a capture of CCTV footage released by the Korean Cultural Center in Tokyo on March 26, 2015, on an arson attack on the building in downtown Tokyo earlier in the day. (Yonhap)
I guess just the fact that all three foreign ministers are meeting is progress, but I don’t expect anything to become of it:
Ships assigned to Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, Indian navy, and U.S. Navy steam alongside Ticonderoga-class guided-missile destroyer USS Shiloh in the East China Sea on July 27, 2014. Abby Rader/U.S. Navy
For the first time in nearly three years, the foreign ministers of China, South Korea and Japan will meet Saturday for trilateral talks that could pave the way for a new era of cooperation – or prolong festering animosities rooted in the World War II era.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will host his Chinese and Japanese counterparts, Wang Yi and Fumio Kishida, in Seoul for the discussions, which were last held in 2012.
The meeting is seen as a possible prelude to a three-way summit between leaders of the countries later this year. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met briefly on the sidelines of the APEC world leaders’ gathering in Beijing in November, but have never had a bilateral summit since they both came to power in 2012. Nor has Abe had a summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Park and Xi, however, have met repeatedly, and warmly.
The 70th anniversary of the war’s end will be marked this summer in Asia with a variety of high-profile events, including a military parade in Beijing. Seven decades since Tokyo’s surrender, Japan, South Korea and China have strong economic ties, but deep strains remain, inhibiting collaboration on a range of matters including maritime issues and North Korea.
Frostiness between South Korea and Japan – both U.S. allies – and closer relations between South Korea and China have complicated Washington’s diplomacy in the region amid China’s continuing rise. [LA TImes]
Here is why it is not in the interest of China or South Korea to resolve these issues with Japan:
At the same time, leaders in China and South Korea often see an advantage to stirring up nationalist, anti-Japan sentiments at home as a way of shoring up political support. Blatant anti-Japanese propaganda appears regularly in state-run media in China, for instance. And conflicting claims to uninhabited islands have also marred relations between Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul.
Whether the three nations now have the will to break their cycle of recriminations and defensiveness remains to be seen. World leaders from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have been urging all three countries in recent weeks to forge a new path.
To be fair members of the Japanese government also use the historical issues to push their own domestic agendas as well. Just visit the Yushukan Museum next to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and see the absurd historical revisionism going on there that many on the Japanese far political right support. If the Japanese government was serious about resolving these historical issues this is what I recommend they should do.
Interesting analysis over at Popular Gusts in regards to the below Joong Ang Ilbo article which a Korean lawmaker is complaining about how Japanese textbooks depict the March 1st Korean independence movement back in 1919:
History textbooks in Korea and Japan are still riddled with inaccuracies in their descriptions of Korea’s March 1 Independence Movement 96 years ago, the catalysis of Korea’s fight against Japan’s colonial rule (1910-1945).
Rep. Han Sun-kyo, a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party, told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday that he analyzed Korean and Japanese history textbooks he received from the Seoul-based think tank Northeast Asian History Foundation and Korea’s Ministry of Education and found the results troubling.
He said a “considerable number of Japanese history textbooks are distorting the facts or minimizing the significance of the March 1 Independence Movement.”
March 1, 1919, remains a touchstone of Korean nationalism as the day when activists declared Korea’s independence and triggered large-scale peaceful demonstrations against Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945).
One Japanese middle school history textbook published by Jiyusa says the March 1 independence movement in Seoul “initially was planned as a non-violent rally but gradually became a large-scale movement,” and that “the army was mobilized and because of a clash on both sides, there were many casualties.” (……)
Korea has been alarmed by Japanese right-wingers’ historical revisionism, which glosses over or denies wartime aggressions and trivializes the victims of its colonial rule over Korea. (……)
But Han added that Korean history textbooks also have inaccuracies, and there are many cases where they “describe the non-violent March 1 movement as violent” or do not mention key events or figures such as Yoo Gwan-soon’s martyrdom [Joong Ang Ilbo]
However, there is only one problem with the lawmakers complaints, the March 1st movement was violent. Popular Gusts provides the analysis:
The problem is, the textbooks describing the independence movement as being “violent” are being accurate. While some of the Japanese dispatches during the Samil Uprising reported in the New York Times described violence on the part of demonstrators, I didn’t realize just how violent the protests were until I read Frank Baldwin’s “Participatory Anti-Imperalism:The 1919 Independence Movement” (Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 1, 1979, pp. 123-162). One assumes this contains some of the material in his dissertation, “The March First Movement: Korean Challenge, Japanese Response” (Columbia University, 1969). In his article, he notes that between March 1 and April 10, 1919, there were “approximately 667 peaceful demonstrations” as compared with “approximately 460 violent incidents.” (…….)
The tale of “peaceful Samil demonstrations” serves the cause of depicting Koreans as a peaceful people beset upon by marauding outsiders; that is to say, victims with no responsibility for their actions. [Popular Gusts]
You can read much more act the link in regards to much of the South Korean myth making in regards to the March 1st Independence Movement. I always appreciate well documented historical analysis like this that cuts through the historical revisionism so prevalent in Korea today.
