In the movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray is fated to repeat one day of his life over and over – that description is apt for relations between Korea and Japan. North Korea’s histrionics again dominated media headlines and managed to overshadow the inauguration of Park Geun-hye in February 2013, even while South Korea and Japan under-reacted to the bluster. With Park’s inauguration, new leaders have taken office in every country in Northeast Asia, including North Korea and China, over the past 18 months. Despite new leadership, the issues remain very much the same: North Korean threats, increased South Korea-Japan economic interactions despite continued squabbling over historical and territorial issues, and a reminder that the US remains deeply involved in regional issues.

In the movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray is fated to repeat one day of his life over and over – and such a description is quite apt for relations between Korea and Japan. North Korea’s histrionics yet again dominated media headlines and managed to overshadow the inauguration of Park Geun-hye in February 2013, even while South Korea and Japan under-reacted to the bluster. With Park’s inauguration, new leaders have taken office in every country in Northeast Asia, including North Korea and China, over the past 18 months. Despite new leadership, the issues remain very much the same: North Korean threats, increased South Korea-Japan economic interactions despite continued squabbling over historical and territorial issues, and a reminder that the US remains deeply intertwined in regional issues.

Stirred, but not shaken

Despite the barrage of threats promising war and the like from Pyongyang, both South Korea and Japan remained “surprisingly” collected (“Amid Another North Korea Storm, Look Who’s Calm,” April 1, 2013, The Christian Science Monitor), even prompting the South Korean media to observe that “Americans appear more nervous than South Koreans since the North explicitly threatened the US,” (“S. Koreans Unruffled by N. Korean Threats,”Chosun Ilbo, April 8, 2013). Although it could be premature to conclude that the North’s most geographically proximate neighbors have thoroughly mastered the distinction between living with fear and living in fear, Pyongyang’s rhetoric had neither the effect of bringing Seoul and Tokyo closer together, nor driving them that much farther apart.

By now, it is common to hear that the dynamics surrounding North Korea are somewhat cyclical and repetitive, but the same may go for the Seoul-Tokyo bilateral ties. Almost four decades ago, one saw similar verbiage that captures a disconnect between mutual antipathy despite growing economic interdependence: a Washington Post article from 1973 starts by referencing a Chosun Ilbo poll that reported 66 percent of South Korean university students view Japan with hostility despite the lack of first-hand experience with Japanese colonialism (Selig S. Harrison, “Japan Yen Buys Little Love in Korea: Koreans Have No Love for Japan Despite Aid, Trade,” The Washington Post, Times Herald, Feb. 27, 1973). These sentiments are echoed in a poll regarding bilateral relations released on April 5, 2013 by Hankook Ilbo, noting that 79.4 percent of the Korean respondents did not feel any friendly feelings toward Japan, while 78 percent replied that they viewed current bilateral relations to be headed in a negative direction.

As a parallel to the dynamics captured in the 1973 article, economic relations between Korea-Japan relations during the first few months of 2013 were not severely hampered by external vulnerabilities. Noteworthy events included Samsung Electronics agreeing to take an equity stake in Sharp, representing the first capital tie-up between notable consumer electronic brands of South Korea and Japan. According to the Financial Times, the investment of ¥10.4 billion by Samsung (a 3 percent stake) will make it the fifth-largest shareholder in Sharp. Another example of cooperation was the joint arrangement announced in January by Korean and Japanese banks and export credit agencies to provide financing and guarantees for the construction of a power plant in Jordan, scheduled for completion in 2014. On the Korean side, the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) committed a total of $320 million in loans and $107 million in guarantees, while Japanese banks BTMU, Mizuho Corporate Bank, and SMBC promised $181 million. Moreover, a consortium of Korean and Japanese firms such as Lotte Engineering and Mitsubishi will be involved with the construction as well as the provision of equipment. Finally, in mid-February, South Korea’s POSCO announced that it will build its first steel pipe plant in Japan with a production capacity of 10,000 tons per year, which would be aimed at supplying the Japanese automakers with the relevant material for parts.

An exception was the announcement by several civic groups in front of Tapgol Park – the epicenter of the March 1 independence movement of 1919 – to boycott Japanese products over the ongoing territorial dispute over Dokdo/Takeshima. The coverage by Yonhap News (Feb. 25, 2013) stated that this would mark the largest anti-Japan boycott in history. This came in the wake of the Feb. 22 Takeshima Day celebrations in Shimane Prefecture of Japan, which drew much media buzz due to the presence of Ms. Shimajiri Aiko, a parliamentary secretary with the Japanese Cabinet Office. It was the first time a Cabinet member attended the ceremony, thus adding a quasi-governmental sheen or endorsement to the event. The backlash from South Korea may have been heightened due to reports in late January that the invitation extended to Prime Minister Abe (a first since the event began in 2005) had been politely declined, as well as plans for any Cabinet members to attend the ceremony, out of fears of provoking Seoul.

Despite the more common response to view the territorial dispute between Seoul and Tokyo as counterproductive only within the context of broader relations, the situation involving Thailand and Cambodia over sovereignty surrounding the temple of Preah Vihear may be instructive here. On April 15, 2013, a court hearing began in The Hague, Netherlands, with Cambodia accusing Thailand of having failed to withdraw its military troops from the vicinity of the temple as well as warning that unfortunate consequences may result from Thailand’s actions. In 1962, Thailand had already lost the case to Cambodia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), with the main rationale being that when the map of the demarcations had been drawn up in 1908, Thailand had failed to reject the map. Thus, according to the legal principle of estoppel, the failure by Thailand to make its complaints explicit despite opportunities to do so was interpreted as tacit consent or acquiescence. It may be far-fetched to believe that a cessation of appeals to territorial sovereignty by either South Korea or Japan over Dokdo/Takeshima may be considered an immediate renunciation of claims, but under international law there is logic to being loud rather than quiet.

When in doubt, appeal to your own masses

Regardless of the external turbulence, the approval rating of Japan’s Cabinet according to Yomiuri Shimbun rose to 74 percent in April – making Prime Minister Abe the first leader in the survey’s 35-year history with a linear rise in popularity for four consecutive months after taking office. Conversely, by March, South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye showed an approval rating of 44 percent according to Gallup, not only a decrease from the mid-50s recorded immediately after the election, but also the lowest approval rating of any incoming president in the democratic era (as comparison, Presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung were at roughly 71 percent, while Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak enjoyed 60 and 52 percent, respectively). To be fair, the context in which Park took office required great adaptability and vision, which is not an easy task for any leader to achieve.

However one wishes to interpret public opinion polls and approval ratings, in the end, appealing to the masses may have outweighed the benefits of cultivating a working political relationship as high-level meetings between Seoul and Tokyo sputtered and stalled in the first months of 2013. The first post-inauguration phone call between President Park and Prime Minister Abe did not occur until March. Instead, many meetings occurred almost by proxy:  Park met Japanese Special Envoy Nukaga Fukushiro in Seoul on Jan. 4; Abe met a close aide to President Park, Hwang Woo Yea, in Tokyo on Jan. 9; Park met former Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei on Feb. 14 and Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro in late February.

A few meetings were also cancelled or postponed. In April, the Mainichi Shimbun reported that the trilateral summit scheduled for May, which would bring together President Park, Prime Minister Abe, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang for the first time since each took office, was postponed due to China’s discontent with Japan over the East China Sea dispute. The foreign ministers’ meeting that typically precedes the trilateral summit by roughly a month was scrapped outright by South Korea on April 22 as a protest against the visit by Japanese officials to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine the day before (a record high attendance by 168 Diet members – a detail that was not lost on the media). In unfortunate timing, a trip to China scheduled for May by a group of Japanese lawmakers led by Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Vice President Komura Masahiko was also cancelled. Subsequently, even ‘generic’ meetings were hard to come by during the first months of 2013.

The upshot of provocations

The one immediate outcome of North Korea’s aggressive and sustained resort to threats was that the resultant flutter of activity in the defense realm by neighboring countries did not incur nearly the same amount of wrath or suspicion than in times of relative tranquility. Thus, the cumulative effect was to dampen the squeamishness that typically accompanies such defense posturing. For instance, Asahi Shimbun reported that Japan had dispatched two Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) destroyers (Kongo and Kirishima) to the Sea of Japan/East Sea by April 9, the US Navy had deployed an Aegis destroyer to the eastern coast of the Shimokita Peninsula, while the USS Shiloh – a guided-missile cruiser with advanced interceptor missile capability – departed from Yokosuka Naval Base on April 8. Moreover, Bessho Koro, Japan’s ambassador to Seoul, also expressed Japan’s wishes to forge the military intelligence pact with South Korea (that fell through last July) to counter North Korea’s increasingly bellicose behavior. According to the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea announced in early April that it will likely purchase European long-range air-to-surface cruise missiles (or “bunker busters”) by 2014, which if successfully acquired, would become the first strategic weapon imported through Europe rather than the US.

There were reports in late March that the US was interested in boosting defense exercises with both South Korea and Japan, along the lines of the Rim of Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises held in 2012. A more interesting development during the first months of 2013, however, was outreach by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to both Seoul and Tokyo. In mid-April, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen met President Park Geun-hye along with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-se and Minister of Defense Kim Kwan-jin to discuss NATO’s Individual Partnership Cooperation Programme, thus becoming the first NATO secretary general to visit South Korea. In his remarks at the press conference held at the National Press Club in Seoul, he emphasized that “NATO’s global perspective does not mean that we seek a presence in the Asia-Pacific region. What it does mean is that we seek to engage with the Asia-Pacific region. And the Republic of Korea is a key partner in this endeavor.” Regardless of the conceptual difference between seeking a presence and engaging in a region, the visit was an important one in terms of forging closer ties with NATO. After visiting Korea, Rasmussen also stopped in Japan and met Prime Minister Abe, which culminated in the signing of the NATO-Japan Joint Political Declaration for a Stronger Partnership – the first joint declaration between NATO and Japan. Again, Rasmussen claimed that “while NATO has no ambition to take on a permanent role in Asia, we see very clearly the advantage of working with like-minded partners like Japan,” and adding that “the signing of the declaration also reflected Abe’s personal commitment to a strong relationship with NATO.” It is too early to predict the implications of these ties.

Sanctions galore! Or, how Tokyo tightened the screws on Pyongyang

Back in 1950, the Soviet Union boycotted the all-important United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on UN intervention in the Korean War in protest against representation of China by the Kuomintang, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) at the time. In its absence (and thus, absence of a veto) the US and other countries successfully passed the UNSC resolution authorizing military intervention in Korea. The lesson from that incident was that it is better at times to be present to voice your opinions than to try and utilize your absence as a demonstration of discontent. Although history was not repeated in its entirety, there were some parallels in the recent decision reached by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to step up investigations into the alleged human-rights abuses such as food deprivation and labor camps in North Korea. On March 21, the UN HRC voted unanimously on the resolution sponsored by the European Union and Japan to create a three-person commission to look into allegations concerning North Korea. Since the current 47-member council contains no Chinese or Russian vote (member countries are elected by the UN General Assembly and serve for a period of three years with no more than two consecutive terms at a time), there was no one to come to Pyongyang’s defense.

Japan’s was also quite active in smacking sanctions on North Korea. As a result of a UNSC resolution that was adopted unanimously on Jan. 22 after the rocket launch conducted by Pyongyang in December 2012, Japan proceeded to freeze the assets of six organizations and four individuals with alleged involvement in the launch. In February, Tokyo announced that it would widen sanctions by banning the re-entry of senior officials of the General Association of Korean Residents (or Chongryon) in retaliation for North Korea’s nuclear test on Feb. 12. In response, a commentary in the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) claimed that the Japanese were unjustly intensifying persecution against Koreans, and that this situation “must be referred to the International Court of Justice.” Then, in March, during the visit by David Cohen, the US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Tokyo announced its plans to ban financial institutions from engaging in business with North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, thereby increasing collaboration with the US on sanctions against Pyongyang. A month later, in April, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide stated that Tokyo had decided to extend sanctions regarding trade and port calls (which would have expired on April 13) against North Korea for two more years. During Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Japan on April 15, Prime Minister Abe once again underscored the importance of coordinating closely with the US on sanctions against the North Korean regime. Whether the sanctions will actually have an impact on (or the desired response from) Pyongyang remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it is clear that Japan is not going to remain passive in voicing views toward North Korea and its behavior.

The months ahead

The summer of 2013 promises to be busy: North Korea will be a major issue confronting both Japan and Korea, but South Korea-Japan political relations are limping along. With the annual Aug. 15 celebration of Korean independence, all will be watching how President Park handles herself and the delicate diplomatic sensitivities that day raises. Japan will hold an election for the Upper House of the Diet in July, and if the LDP and Prime Minister Abe win a majority to go along with the LDP’s majority in the Lower House, he may feel emboldened to pursue – or continue to pursue – a foreign policy that South Koreans perceive as unduly muscular and unapologetic, which could lead to further diplomatic tensions between the two nations.