Will the ‘spring breeze’ arrive in Korea?

YOO JEE-HYE
The author is the head of the diplomatic and security news team at the JoongAng Ilbo.

“It approaches like a spring breeze and moves people’s hearts.”

A Japanese foreign ministry official told me about “Kishida’s leadership” when Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was serving as foreign minister from 2012 to 2017. The official said that “emotional guarding,” a common practice in public society, was rare. Because former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made frequent history-based provocations and aggravated Korea-Japan discord, it was fortunate for Korea to have a soft and polite Japanese foreign minister.

Relations between the two countries have improved considerably. I was surprised when I heard Kishida personally explained the outcome of the U.S.-Japan summit to President Yoon Suk Yeol in a telephone conversation proposed by the prime minister on April 17. In the past, the post-summit explanation came from the United States. It is unimaginable for it to come from Japan, especially from the highest level.

But that’s not enough. A bromance between the two leaders is welcome, but there is nothing substantial that the Japanese side should do. For instance, more than a year has passed since the Yoon administration decided to adopt third-party compensation for wartime forced labor, but no Japanese company is participating in raising the funds needed. Certainly, there is a limit to the Yoon administration’s ability to persuade the public only with its will. There are layers of adverse factors. Japan continues to make “routine provocations” over Dokdo’s sovereignty in textbooks, diplomatic bluebooks and defense white papers every year. There is also a widespread perception that the Japanese government is trying to “snatch” the messenger app Line by arbitrarily adjusting Naver’s stake.

If Japan’s application for the designation of Sado mine as a Unesco World Heritage Site is accepted in July, it can instantly change the flow of Korea-Japan relations. At least 1,200 Koreans were mobilized and forced to work at the mine during the Japanese occupation. But Japan omitted the forced labor and only highlighted the value as an industrial heritage of gold mining from the Edo period.

In 2015, Japan applied for a Unesco heritage site for Hashima Island, better known as Battleship Island, in Nagasaki by eliminating the part on forced labor. In the end, the island was “conditionally registered” as the heritage site after Tokyo promised to acknowledge and record the history of forced labor.

Japan has not kept that promise completely. If Tokyo makes yet another sly attempt to register the Sado mine, it will inevitably prompt strong anti-Japanese sentiment even the Yoon-Kishida bromance can’t stop. Kishida’s spring breeze cannot reach the hearts of Koreans if it’s not followed by actions.