Japan-South Korea row
complicates Obama policy
http://www.manilatimes.net/japan-south-korea-row-complicates-obama-policy/91788/
SEOUL, South Korea:
As he hops around the Western Pacific this week, President Barack Obama hopes
to unite much of Asia around a free-trade
deal, updated alliances and a new power balance. But he first must persuade two
of America’s
closest allies to stop squabbling.
Jetting from Tokyo
to Seoul on
Friday morning, his second stop on the trip, Obama was between two nations
mired in an old feud. South Koreans are furious over what they perceive as
inadequate remorse from Japan
over its brutal colonization of their nation from 1910 to 1945, and its use of
Korean “comfort women” as sex slaves during World War II.
Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe and Korean President Park Geun-hye have traded slights and diplomatic
digs for months. Tension is so high that a recent poll found Abe as unpopular
among South Koreans as North
Korea strongman Kim Jong Un.
Obama will spend Friday
laying a wreath at South Korea’s
national war memorial, visiting a historic palace in Seoul
and trying to ease the tension between Park and Abe, who was Obama’s host for
two days in Tokyo.
At stake is coordination on key security and economic issues in northeastern
Asia, where nuclear-armed North Korea
threatens both Japan and South Korea.
Washington As Peacemaker
The White House has tried to
play peacemaker. Obama and his team spent weeks making phone calls and holding
meetings to bring Park and Abe together on the sidelines of a nuclear summit in
The Hague last month.
The two met with smiles and a
handshake, as Obama stood behind them. Abe attempted to speak to Park in
Korean. South Korean reporters described Park’s reaction as “stony-faced.”
Anger was fueled in Seoul by recent reports that Abe had sent a ritual
offering to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo,
which commemorates Japanese war dead, including former leaders convicted as war
criminals after World War II. Abe visited the shrine in December.
The Japanese leader sounded
an apologetic note at a news conference with Obama in Tokyo on Wednesday.
When an American reporter
asked about Yasukuni, Abe noted that during the war Japan “inflicted tremendous damage
and pain,” and he said there was “no change” in his government’s past
apologies. He said he had visited the shrine to pray for the war dead, not to
send a new message, and he pledged to devote himself to human rights and the
rule of law.
South Korean attitudes toward
Japan,
as reflected in a poll published in February by the Asan Institute for Policy
Studies, remain almost uniformly hostile. Besides the historical issues, South
Koreans are unhappy about Abe’s claims to disputed East
China Sea islands known as Dokdo to South Koreans and Takeshima to
Japanese.
“Perhaps Mr. Abe’s only
saving grace has been that North Korea
has continued to pursue provocations, ensuring that Japan remains only slightly more
favorable,” the institute concluded.
Obama remained silent on the
Yasukuni dispute. Like Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, he visited
the Meiji shrine, which honors the 19th century ruler who helped modernize
feudal Japan.
Obama’s trip has already
provided one disappointment. As he prepared to leave Tokyo, negotiators ended talks on the
proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal, without the
breakthrough White House aides had wanted.