An article from Sankei Shinbun, Japanese newspaper, on July 27, 2013. Professor James. E. Auer, the author
of the article, seemed to show surprise at S.Koreans completely ignorance on Japan and felt confused about
their one-sided historical perceptions. I think I want all S.Kreans to know about true histories between
Japan and S.Korea.
Let’s talk about the truth of JP-SK relations
July 26 2013
James.E.Auer, a director of Center for U.S. Japan
Studies and Cooperation, Vanderbilt University
Last month, I visited to Seoul for three days at the invitation of a S.Korean senior politician
who is a supporter of President Park Geun Hye. Unfortunately, most of S.Koreans whom I met
there viewed Japan in a negative light.
<The comfort women were not exclusively the Korean women>
I asked the S.Koreans I have met there why they obviously changed their opinion about Japan-Korea
disputes after the Japanese prime minister Keizo Obuchi and the President Kim Dae-jung (both at that time)
issued a joint statement in 1998 saying that both nations agreed on settling the confrontation
between the two and moving toward better relations.
Most S.koreans claimed that their stance have not changed since 1998. Instead, their current attitude
of ant-Japanese are due to Japanese insensitivity toward bilateral history issues including
Prime Ministers’visits to Yasukuni Shrine or Japan’s claim to Takeshima (Dokdo).
I said them that none of the leader of Japan, S.Korea and the US would forgive the practices of
prostitution conducted by Japan till 1945 in China.
We have no hard numbers, but it might well be that the number of the Korean comfort women, who were
sold by their poor peasant parents or applied for employment by other way, was more than that of the
comfort women from Japan, China or other countries.
However, it was not a plan to recruit comfort women only from Korea. There seems little doubt that
Japan sincerely feels a sense of remorse for the true suffering which this project inflicted on
comfort women of all the nationalities during the war.
In those days, prostitution was legal in Japan. The US troops also received sexual services from
Japan during the occupation. I don’t mean to suggest that these facts prove what happened was right,
but I mean that they show how different values at that time were from the ones of today.
With regard to Japanese government officials’visit to Yasukuni Shrine, I said them the Japanese
leaders have not visited Yasukuni Shrine in order to either honoring some class-A war criminals listed
there or praising Japan's own behavior of apologies toward other countries. More importantly, it seems
to be a big contradictions that such a country like China that hates criticism against its own
internal affairs from abroad blames Japan for its politicians’ visits to the shrine which is dedicated
to the Japanese soldiers who served and died for their country.
<Yasukuni is no different than Arlington>
Now the US president and leaders of other countries include Japan and S.K. visit the Arlington
National Cemetery in Virginia, US, even though there are many tombs of Johnny Rebs who fought for the
South that supported slavery. Today most of advanced countries don’t accept slavery, but there is
no one who claim to remove the tombs of Johnny Rebs from the National Cemetery because they believed
in slavery.
After much talk with the S.Koreans I found that the most difficult problem was concerned with
"Takeshima" I said that Japan didn’t seem change its views of the problem due to legal bases favorable
to Japan. Meanwhile, I asked, though Japan never be likely to send SDF troops to drive away the S.Korean
soldiers from Takeshima now, why they don’t stop worrying about the issue. The only answer that
I heard from them was because the SKoreans thought the Japanese govt should agree the opinion that
Takeshima belongs to S.Korea absolutely.
There was only one group that didn’t complain about Japan. They were in the base of S.Korean navy.
I saw “Cheonan(天安)” which was the S.Korean corvette (a patrol combatant craft) torpedoed by N.Korea
before. The officers never talk about politics, instead, talk of the need to collaborate with the
Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the United States Navy to counter vicious and unpredictable
behaviors by N.Korea realistically.
<Contribution of JP-Sino War and JP-Russo war to Korea>
What can we do to change S.Korea’s attitude towards Japan for the better? One of my students who
has lived in Seoul since his/her birth and worked there for more than 20 years since graduated from
Vanderbilt University, said that he/she thought Japan would have to keep taking a patient stance
until the Koreans overcome thier inferiority complex. I’m sorry to say that it seems to be right
to the point. However I would expect President Park to be able to work out a deal with Prime Minister
Abe.
Although the Japanese would never mention this, I believe it deserves consideration for the Koreans
that there was a common reason for Japan to win the two wars against China in 1895 and Russia in
1905. Japan wasn’t against Korea at that time, but it was afraid that Korea come to be controlled
either by China or Russia. If China won JP-Sino War, Korea might have become a colony of China, also
if Russia defeated Japan, Korea must have been Russian’s. After all Japan’s victories of the two
wars leaded Korea to the position of a democracy based on the market economy like today.
There are some peoples who say with enthusiasm that Japan is drifting to the right.
Is it really like that? Is Japan just trying to become a normal country whose
people care about the land they live on as every coutry’s people do?
Japan has apologized over and over again and made many reparations to the victim
countries after the war. The problem is that some govts of these countries have
not only not informed their public about these facts but have also provided their
people with terrible anti-Japan educations for a long time. Therefore, no matter how
much Japan shows its sincerity, it couldn’t establish better relations with them.
Actually, it was only in 2005 that the S.Korean people knew about Japan-Republic of
Korea Basic Relations Treaty of 1965, 40 years after of the conclusion of the treaty!,
in which the two countries came to important arrangements about postwar reparations,
and Japan promised to offer a huge amount of money to S.K, roughly 1.5 times the national
budget of it at the time. Later, S.K govt received it without telling its people.
In addition Japan has supported the Korean govt every time it was hit by a currency crisis
or economic troubles by giving 1-1.5 billion-dollar per event or by concluding bilateral
swap agreements with S.K, of course, these also have been disclosed in public.
If Japan seems to have take a tougher line to these countries recently, it might be
because the Japanese govt is gradually begining to doubt whether these countries really
are worthy of its confidence?, they really can follow the international rules?
For example, nonsensically, the number of Nanjing Massacre’s victims is increasing
substantially every year in China, or it is said that in S.K parents have taught their
children "You do every bad thing for beating Japanese”and now the children are speaking
evil of Japan with mixture of fact and fiction to the people of the world just in keeping
their parents' teachings, besides, if Japan remarks against their will a bit, their govt incite
a riot against Japan and sometimes makes its people destroy Japanese company buildings there
and doesn’t try to make any compensation for their enormous loss. I wonder why such violence
could be allowed in the international community these days?
I dare say, instead the international community accuses Japan of the issue of comfort
women 70 years ago, it should check China’s violence directed against Japan, Tibet, Vietnum,
Philippines and Uighur or tens of thousands of N.Korean women who said to be sold openly to
China near the borther between N.K and China NOW.
