Korea-Japan relations returned to normal over the summer months as Pyongyang-Tokyo relations remained at a standstill and Seoul-Tokyo relations followed the dual track approach. For both Pyongyang and Seoul, the primary demand is for Japan to offer an acceptable apology and compensation for Japan’s actions during its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang demanded atonement for Japan “war crimes” as the basic condition for the resumption of dialogue between the two countries. Seoul urged Japan to sincerely apologize to Korean women forced into wartime sexual slavery, saying that the issue cannot be resolved diplomatically. Other sources of contention for North Korea-Japan relations are Japan’s support for UN sanctions against the DPRK and Pyongyang’s unwillingness to account for past abductions of Japanese citizens. In the case of South Korea-Japan relations, the disputes over Dokdo/Takeshima and biased history textbooks lingered, although both sides made efforts to strengthen economic, security, and cultural ties despite those issues.

Standstill: Pyongyang-Tokyo relations

At the end of April, there was increasing optimism that North Kora and Japan might pursue diplomatic normalization in the final months of 2018. At the historic North-South Korea summit on April 27, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his willingness to hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, and Abe expressed interest in holding a summit with Kim. However, the atmosphere of reconciliation between Pyongyang and Tokyo lasted less than a month as the two countries failed to narrow their positions on sanctions and pressure.

Although recognizing North Korea’s recent expression of its commitment to denuclearization in outward statements as “significant progress,” Japan retained the position that the international community should “firmly maintain economic sanctions and continue to apply maximum pressure on North Korea” until Pyongyang takes concrete actions with regard to denuclearization. On May 8, calling Japan’s continued support for sanctions and pressure against its regime as “throwing cold water over easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s official  newspaper, denounced Japan for “seeking to profit from the worsening security situations on the peninsula.” On May 9, Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) leveled criticism at Japan’s first joint exercise with the British Navy off Honshu for simulating a sea blockade against North Korea while “peace-loving North Korea” was making proactive and positive efforts for its expected summit with the United States. Given the tension, despite the Japanese government’s continued push for high-level talks between the two countries on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in August, North Korea provided only a lukewarm response.

Continued disagreement over North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s further strained bilateral relations. Japan noted that Tokyo is considering Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Pyongyang for a summit with Kim as an option, but with a minimum condition of including Japan in the reinvestigation of the abduction of Japanese by North Korean agents. Optimism about the possible diplomatic thaw was short lived, however. During the June 12 Trump-Kim summit, Kim made no reference to the abduction issue, indicating there had been no changes to North Korea’s official position that the abduction issue had been settled.

Parents of Megumi Yokota shows pictures of their daughter who was abducted to North Korean in 1977. The pictures were brought back by Japanese delegates from North Korea after a fact-finding mission in November 2004. Photo: AFP

While Tokyo sets the abduction issue as a minimum condition for the resumption of dialogue, Pyongyang appears to expect a Japanese apology and compensation for war crimes during its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45 as its minimum. On Aug. 23, urging Japan to realize that it can never move into the future with its “crime-woven past” unaddressed, a spokesman for the North’s Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee issued a statement saying that “[w]hat is all the more intolerable is that the Abe group is adding new crimes to the piles of the hideous past crimes, far from atoning for them. While keeping mum about the hideous crime that took the lives of millions of the Koreans, they are hyping the issue of a few abductees.”

Dual-track approach: Seoul-Tokyo relations

In our April article, we anticipated that the North Korea factor would continue to influence Seoul-Tokyo relations greatly in the summer months, especially if the North were to take concrete actions toward denuclearization based on the inter-Korea agreement. However, as the North Korea issue progressed slowly, the ups-and-downs of Seoul-Tokyo relations were largely shaped by a dual-track approach. Historical issues, especially, the issue of Japan’s wartime forced labor and sexual enslavement of Koreans and sovereignty claims to Dokdo/Takeshima remained sources of discord in bilateral relations. For instance on July 24, aptly reflecting the Moon administration’s decision to overturn the 2015 comfort women agreement between the two countries, Seoul approved a budget to replace a ¥1 billion yen ($9 million) fund the Japanese government paid to settle the diplomatic row over Japan’s wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women. Despite these tensions, Seoul and Tokyo strove to strengthen economic, security, and cultural ties.

On the 73rd anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s colonial rule (Aug. 15, 2018), about 700 South Korean citizens join a weekly rally in Seoul against Japan’s wartime sex slavery. Photo: Yonhap

South Korea and Japan promoted economic cooperation through both bilateral and trilateral channels. In May, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Plus Three finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Manila, Bank of Korea (BOK) Gov. Lee Ju-yeol expressed South Korea’s desire for reviving a currency swap deal with Japan, which had been suspended over a diplomatic row last year. Tokyo had broken off negotiations citing Seoul’s decision to let a “comfort women” statue be installed near the Japanese consulate in Busan. Also, in May, finance chiefs of the governments in Seoul, Beijing and and Tokyo produced a trilateral joint statement warning against growing protectionism trends, and Prime Minister Abe and President Moon agreed to cooperate on promoting a trilateral free trade pact for mutual economic growth.

In an effort to address Japan’s fear of being “sidelined” in the discussion of denuclearizing North Korea and enhancing peace and stability in the region, President Moon vowed to help Japan improve ties with North Korea, and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa confirmed Seoul’s commitment to close policy coordination with Tokyo and Washington for complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of the North’s nuclear program. The Japanese government stressed the importance of closer cooperation with South Korea and the US over the North’s denuclearization at a United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament on June 26. However, Japan’s involvement in the denuclearization talks remained limited due to North Korea’s strong expression of discontent about Japan’s intervention in the issue, noting that Tokyo is not a signatory to the Panmunjom Declaration between the two Koreas nor the North’s summit agreement with the US.

The US-North Korea summit on June 12, 2018 in Singapore. Photo: Yonhap

Turning to culture, South Korea and Japan relations were, as usual, complex. People-to-people exchanges expanded, but negative feelings dominated public sentiment toward the other country. Data released by the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) indicated that the number of tourist visits between the two countries was much higher than in 2017. However, a June 2018 poll by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank, showed the level of South Korean’s favorable feelings toward Japan to be 3.55 on a scale of 0 to 10, lower than sentiment toward the US (5.97), North Korea (4.71), and even China (4.16). Also, a joint survey conducted by the South Korean private think tank East Asia Institute and Japanese think tank Genron NPO, between May and June, showed that for the first time since 2013, the ratio of Japanese having friendly feelings toward South Korea (22.9 percent) dropped lower than that of South Koreans toward Japan (28 percent). As part of efforts to address unfavorable public sentiment between the two countries, Seoul and Tokyo bolstered cultural exchanges. For instance, on Aug. 24, the Busan municipal government re-enacted an historic parade of Korea’s cultural missions to Japanese southwestern port city of Shimonoseki. On Aug. 29, the culture ministers from South Korea, Japan, and China held their three-day annual meeting in Harbin to discuss ways to expand trilateral cultural exchanges and vowed to cooperate on developing the common brand of the East Asian Culture City.

The months ahead

Unless the two Koreas and Japan can find a mutually satisfactory way to get beyond past grievances, Japan’s relations with the North will remain at a standstill and will be shaped by the dual-track approach with the South. Initially, President Moon vowed to help Japan improve its ties with North Korea, but now that Pyongyang has demanded Tokyo’s atonement and compensation for past war crimes as basic conditions for the resumption of dialogue, Moon will have to rethink his strategy. As a middle power, South Korea’s ideal strategy is to leverage networks and play the mediator role, but often that strategy is obstructed by Korea’s nationalist anti-Japan identity. Is it possible to form a united Korean front on the history issue to demand a sincere apology and compensation from Japan? Or, will Seoul’s commitment to close policy coordination with Tokyo and Washington for complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of the North’s nuclear program create discord between the two Koreas? It is hard to predict the trajectories of Pyongyang-Tokyo and Seoul-Tokyo relations, but we can be sure that the trajectories are closely intertwined.