The Japan-South Korea Comfort Women Deal

The cycle of negativity surrounding Japan-South Korea relations since the Abe-Park era began in early 2013 has at times eclipsed North Korea as a source of angst among observers of Northeast Asia. Even the modest improvements that accompanied commemorations of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic normalization in June 2015 were tinged by frustration over the two governments’ failure to move forward on the comfort women issue. The chief problem was the lack of acknowledgement of Japanese responsibility for the coercion of girls and women to provide sexual services to the military in imperial Japan, and this disagreement extended to other historical issues that hung over the relationship.

It was especially surprising, then, that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and President Park Geun-hye cut a deal to resolve the comfort women issue. The agreement reached the end of 2015 followed more than a dozen rounds of consultations between the two governments, a process that unfolded under intense media scrutiny and ever-growing suspicion of the other side’s intentions. Park made resolution of the problem a condition of the “re-normalization” of relations with Japan, while Abe and many of his supporters appeared increasingly frustrated and fatigued by the inability of the two sides to move past this and other historical issues.  

In his statement – one of two released simultaneously by the two foreign ministers – Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said that Abe, as the “cabinet prime minister of Japan,” extended his “heartfelt apologies and remorse to all those who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.” He acknowledged that “the honor and dignity of many women were severely injured with the involvement of the Japanese military,” and “From this perspective, the Japanese government fully realizes responsibility.” Japan will provide 1 billion yen ($8.4 million) from the government budget to fully finance a foundation, run by the Korean government, to support the comfort women.

The two countries agreed that the settlement is a “final and irreversible” end to the issue between the two governments as long as Japan faithfully follows through with its promise. The two governments agreed to refrain from criticizing each other over the issue in the international community, including at the United Nations. South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said the settlement is final and irreversible as long as Japan keeps its promises. As part of the deal, the Seoul government “acknowledged the Japanese government’s concerns” over a statue erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul that honors the comfort women.

The commitments by both leaders are to be commended as acts of political leadership and statesmanship of the sort that we called for last year in our book, The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash. Abe, a man widely believed to harbor personal doubts about the validity of the comfort women claim, who insisted that all legal claims were settled in the 1965 agreement to normalize relations between the two counties, and who repeatedly said that Japan (and the world) should look forward rather than back, plainly acknowledged Japanese responsibility, and opened the Japanese purse to assuage some of the pain. Park is also brave in her pursuit of justice, finality between governments, and seeking the support of the Korean public for a solution to difficult issues that, in the personal view of many victims, can never be forgiven.

Park on December 31 urged swift implementation of the agreement, stated that her administration is “listening to various concerns” raised about the agreement, and warned that “inflaming emotions with untrue reporting does absolutely nothing to help advance the relationship between the two countries.” A Korean Realmeter poll taken following the agreement showed that the deal was initially opposed by 51 percent of Koreans and supported by 43 percent, while Japanese polls such as a mid-January Asahi poll have shown strong support (61 percent supporting and 18 percent opposing) for the settlement in Japan.

Steven Denney and Karl Friedhoff have both observed that responses to the agreement roughly aligned with the contours of public support for the Park administration, with those opposed primarily younger (under 50) and progressive and those supporting the agreement mostly older (over 50) and conservative. Moreover, Friedhoff argues that the wording of the Korea Realmeter question failed to provide information on the specifics of the agreement and that the issue has not registered as a top priority among the Korean public. The aspect of Korean views that is most potentially troubling for the agreement is the breakdown of opinion along partisan lines: The return of the South Korean opposition to power would likely challenge the government’s pledge that the comfort women settlement is “final and irreversible.”

On the other hand, Celeste Arrington, who has conducted research and interviews on the evolution of the comfort women movement, makes the case that the agreement will not stick precisely because it falls far short of satisfying the movement’s core demands. The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan rejected the statement the day after it was issued on grounds that it failed to acknowledge that governmental responsibility for actively initiating “the activities which were criminal and illegal” and that the prime minister did not personally make the apology.

Pressure

Divided Korean public opinion over the agreement places greater pressure on the governments to make progress with implementation if the agreement is to be sustainable. The Korean government will need to move forward with establishing the foundation as a tangible demonstration of progress. Otherwise, the comfort women and their supporters will continue to gradually chip away at the agreement and keep the issue as a stumbling block in Korea-Japan relations.

Ironically, then, the Park administration will only be successful in winning Korean public support for the agreement if it receives support and cooperation from the government of Japan in two critical aspects. First, the Japanese government must proactively implement its part of the agreement by quickly funding the foundation as a first step in implementation. Ideally, it would take initial steps to allocate funding for the Korean-operated foundation prior to South Korean National Assembly elections scheduled for April so as to prevent the agreement from becoming a political football in South Korea’s legislative election scrum.

Second, the Abe administration must marginalize critical voices of those within Japan who, for their own reasons, may seek to prevent the agreement from moving forward and gaining credibility. A critical step is a zero-tolerance policy among Japanese Cabinet members and top party and government officials toward statements or acts that challenge this agreement. Yes, Japan is a democracy and there is freedom of speech and religion, but Abe (and his successors) should demand full and complete compliance by anyone who accepts a senior post in his party or government. Tokyo appears to be taking this line. When conservative lawmaker Sakurada Yoshitaka, a member of the ruling LDP, said in January that the comfort women “were prostitutes by occupation” and that people have been “heavily misled by propaganda work treating them as if they were victims,” he was forced to apologize for and retract the remarks. Japan could even go further by acknowledging that the comfort women statue is a valid tribute that memorializes the experience of the victims rather than merely demanding its removal. Ultimately, any evidence of foot-dragging or backsliding by the Abe administration in moving forward will only inflame those who are opposed to the agreement.

In this respect, there are two immediate challenges. The first is the comfort women statue in front of the Japanese embassy. Constructed by civil society groups, the Seoul government has limited leverage to deal with it. It could be forcibly removed, but the justification, legal or otherwise, would be thin. Despite a split in Korean reactions to the agreement, polls showed strong public support for keeping the statue in its current location. Moreover, Korean support for keeping the statue where it is will remain solid unless Japan steps forward first to meet its commitments by providing the Korean government with funds to establish the foundation. Any effort within Japan to reverse the sequence of actions implied in the agreement would likely to be fatal to its successful implementation.

Ultimately, success in dealing with the statue will depend on the second challenge – winning support for the agreement from the comfort women. This task has been made even more difficult by the way the deal was concluded.

Understandably, negotiations were conducted in secret. But in doing so, the most important constituency, the comfort women themselves, was blindsided by the announcement. They had no input into the process and have complained about being victimized once again. The challenge of outreach to the comfort women has been made worse by the fact that South Korea’s Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs was the primary point of contact for the comfort women within the government, but was not included in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Blue House-led negotiations with Japan.

The Park administration must do its best to win over the comfort women while building broad public support for reconciliation with Japan. The best way to do this would be for those women to be deeply engaged in the process of establishing the new foundation; it must be seen as theirs, rather than an instrument of the Korean government. In reality, there is a limit to what governments can do, since confession and repentance, as matters of the human heart, cannot be resolved irreversibly or with finality by governments.  

This is manifest in the extent to which the victimhood embodied by the comfort women (and the Korean nation as a whole as a result of Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula) is an integral part of Korean identity. Turning away from that history to focus instead on the future demands a radical reassessment of who Koreans think they are. This is a huge undertaking, but one that is essential to South Korea’s future on many different levels.

Most importantly, both Abe and Park still must convince their respective publics of the importance of this agreement for their own national interests. In both countries there are whispers that this deal has been done for, or forced by, the United States. Efforts by the U.S. government to aid Tokyo and Seoul in overcoming their differences have been seen as an attempt by Washington not to help but to impose its preferences on them. Regardless of the hearty U.S. welcome for the agreement, we are hardly in an era in which the U.S. president can be credibly accused of arm-twisting and heavy-handedness, even when dealing with allies. Obama’s invitation to a trilateral summit at the Hague in March 2014 may have set the stage for efforts to improve relations between Seoul and Tokyo, but ultimately the responsibility, credit, and blame for such an effort ultimately must go to national leaders themselves.

A mentality that sees the United States as a broker pushing Korea-Japan relations for the sake of its own narrow interests will undermine sincere attempts at dealing with history. And it distracts from the reality that this issue, and the others like it, demands that Japan and South Korea take responsibility, not only for behavior in the past, but for their current and future behavior as well.