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.
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.
This article in The Diplomat really articulates why Japan and South Korea are having their current bitter trade dispute:
To understand why a free trade-dependent, rules-upholding country is apparently willing to undermine the rules of free trade with one of its most important trading partners, it may be useful to divide rules, norms, laws, treaties – the “stuff” of international order – between the content of what they regulate, e.g. trade, and the attributes that make them meaningful, e.g. mutual acceptance, reliability, and finality. In an ironic twist, Japan is using a particular subset of international rules, norms, laws, and treaties (specifically regulating trade) to fight for a common understanding that rules, norms, laws, and treaties (but especially those concerning historical issues) ought to be mutually accepted, reliable, and final once signed.
Even if the agreement reached in years or decades prior is not the preferred agreement of the current generation, there needs to be an acceptance of those agreements as constituted. Perhaps the only silver lining in all of this is that a liberal president rules in South Korea and a conservative prime minister leads Japan — “To forge an enduring deal,” Glosserman emphasizes, “this combination is what you need.” After having been burned twice – once after reaching an agreement with a dictatorship and once after reaching an agreement with a democratically-elected conservative administration – an agreement reached with a democratically-elected liberal administration may have greater weight in Japanese estimations of its future durability. But as Japan has abided by (would have abided by) these past agreements, Tokyo wants to see the initiative for another attempt come from South Korea.
Japan’s trade restriction on exports to South Korea is not Tokyo’s optimal policy, and it is not a long-term solution to Japan’s historical issues with South Korea. It is a desperate attempt by one country trying to get its valuable economic and security partner to commit to putting the relationship of today and the relationship of the future ahead of the issues of the past.
The Diplomat
You can read the rest at the link, but it is clear that the Japanese government’s patience has reached its limit on the ROK government backing out on signed deals that a new administration does not like.
With that said I don’t know how President Moon can back down now considering how strongly he has pushed anti-Japanese sentiment for domestic political purposes since he was elected. This leads me to believe this could drag on for quite some time.
Here is the latest economic measure the Japanese are looking at taking against South Korea:
Japan’s plan to remove Korea from its “white list” of countries with preferential trade treatment will endanger the alliance between Korea, Japan and the United States and threaten regional security in Northeast Asia, the trade minister said Wednesday.
Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Sung Yun-mo said the Korean government has delivered its “written opinion” to Tokyo. This is the first time Korea has delivered a message this way to Japan over economic issues.
The document contains details on why Japan’s July 4 export restrictions on three materials for manufacturing semiconductors, and an additional move to remove Korea from its whitelist of 27 countries are unfair and groundless.
“The groundless export curbs on three materials for semiconductors should be lifted immediately and the action to remove Korea from its whitelist should also be scrapped,” Sung said during a press conference at the Government Complex in Seoul.
“The attempt to remove Korea from its whitelist is an especially serious issue which sways the foundation of the cooperation between Korea, Japan and the U.S. on security in Northeast Asia, as well as dealing a heavy blow to the Korea-Japan economic partnership which has lasted over 60 years.”
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but this is clearly tit-for-tat because earlier this week the ROK said they were considering ending the GSOMIA security pact with Japan. So Japan comes back with a threat to take South Korea off their white list.
This whole dispute could be ended if the Moon administration stops with its plan to forcibly seize the assets of Japanese companies within South Korea.
South Korea to Japan: You're violating international law
— Josh Smith (@joshjonsmith) July 19, 2019
Japan to South Korea: You're violating international lawhttps://t.co/UQJmGwMeJr
The trade dispute from South Korea and Japan may intensify by July 24th:
Trade tensions between South Korea and Japan are escalating as Tokyo seems to be preparing to expand the scope of its export controls beyond high-tech materials to a wide spectrum of areas, which could disrupt the global supply chain, industry watchers said Monday.
Japan began applying stricter export rules on South Korea for three key materials needed for making chips and displays on July 4 over a wartime forced labor issue and is pushing to remove South Korea from a list of trusted buyers, which could affect the supply of other key materials needed for making smartphones, televisions, chemicals and other industrial materials.
Tokyo’s move to exclude Seoul from its “whitelist” of countries on national security grounds would require Korean companies to seek export licenses for a wider range of technologies, which could result in additional costs and time.
South Korea is currently on the neighbor’s 27-nation whitelist, which includes the United States, Germany, Poland and Italy.
“If Japan removes South Korea from its whitelist, about 1,100 items are estimated to be affected by the new regulations,” a Seoul trade ministry official said, asking not to be named. “We are closely analyzing the potential impact from Japan’s move on the South Korean industry.”
The Japanese government is expected to announce the decision on July 24 after a review process, which goes into effect 21 days later. Seoul’s trade ministry proposed another meeting with its Japanese counterpart before the deadline to discuss the issue, after their first meeting Friday failed to mend the disputes.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but some observers believe the trade dispute will ease after upper house elections in Japan are complete on Sunday. The observers believe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is using the trade dispute for political advantage in the election.
