Asia’s frenemies

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Thursday the 9th of June, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up, a new era for Japan and South Korea.

Increasing aggression from North Korea and China has made the other nations in Asia— understandably— uncomfortable. But it’s also driving them to overlook bad blood in the name of self-defense.

WORLD’s Josh Schumacher reports.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Two months ago, South Korea’s newly elected but yet-to-be inaugurated president, Yoon Suk Yeol, sent a delegation to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Its mission? To help improve relations between the two nations.

AUDIO: [Man speaking Korean, music]

At Yoon’s inauguration last month, Japan’s foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, returned the favor.

These two exchanges between dignitaries might seem unremarkable. But they could make a remarkable difference for the entire region.

Christine Kim is a professor of international studies at Cedarville University who lives in South Korea. She says Japan and South Korea have had a terrible relationship for longer than the United States has even existed.

KIM: So Japan invaded Jo-Sung Korea in the 1592 as a way to conquer the Ming dynasty of China, because Korea was located between Japan and China. Although Japan failed to take over a weaker but strongly resistant Koreans in the seven year long war at the time, it caused serious damage in the land and the people and left long lasting scars and the psyche of the Korean people since then.

Nearly two hundred years later, Japan once again invaded Korea. And by 1910, Japan had basically annexed the peninsula.

KIM: And its colonization of Korea and colonial rule are generally described as one of the most brutal ones in history. The Japanese occupation is characterized by discrimination, various attempts to eliminate Korea's traditional culture, and exploitation of people and resource.

One of the worst manifestations of this colonial exploitation was Japan’s enslavement of up to hundreds of thousands of Korean women to serve as so-called “comfort women” for the Japanese army.

KIM: Korea was liberated only with the victory of the allied forces in 1945. And Korea was split into two halves, the South occupied by the United States and the North occupied by the Soviet Union. Until 1965, Japan and Korea didn't have any formal diplomatic relations.

Since then, the two countries have forged an official relationship. But it’s marred by bitterness over Japan’s historical mistreatment of Korea—especially surrounding the “comfort women”—and fears that history could repeat itself. They’ve also had territorial disputes over islands, and other, smaller disagreements.

But that sour relationship looks like it’s starting to sweeten.

Bruce Klingner is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He says that for a long time, regional security has suffered from South Korea’s bitterness toward Japan.

KLINGNER: We tend to think of South Korea and Japan as separate geographically. But if you look at a map, Japan, the long archipelago sort of curves under South Korea, so if you just do a straight line, flight trajectory of a North Korean missile flying south, it could hit South Korean targets, U.S. bases in South Korea, Japanese targets that are south of South Korea. So we're all in this together.

But up to this point, South Korea hasn’t been willing to work with Japan and the United States to address that situation.

KLINGNER: Because of these historic differences. South Korea has refused to integrate its missile defense system into the U.S.-Japan system. And so what that's like is a baseball coach telling three outfielders I don't want you talking to each other. Even though we know that if you're out there catching a ball and your, your two other outfielders have a different angle of view, they can tell you, Oh, it's gonna go over your head, move back, even though you think you're going to catch the ball.

But newly elected South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol appears ready to start using a new playbook.

KLINGNER: What he has said and he's only been in office about three weeks, but he said that their strategic ambiguity is dead, the fence sitting of please don't make us choose between our security partner Washington and our trading partner, Beijing. Yoon is saying an improved and stronger alliance with the United States will be the foundation for South Korea's Foreign Policy outreach towards North Korea and China. So we'll have to see what steps Yoon is actually willing to take. But again, at least he's saying the right things.

And Japan also seems ready to take a new approach.

KLINGNER: With Japan, again, we're seeing a positive trend under this Prime Minister and his predecessors of, of doing more. The problem with Japan is everything is glacially slow…

Klingner says a better relationship between South Korea and Japan won’t come overnight, but it’s moving in the right direction.

KLINGNER: So I think right now, you know, the alliances and the relationships the US has with Japan and South Korea are positive, and I think will continue to be so. That doesn't mean we're going to solve North Korea or China. But at least we're all, as all three ships are facing the same direction.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

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