Japan and South Korea, the Friendly Foes of East Asia

Members of the Unification Church commemorate the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, in Seoul in 2012. Credit Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press
Members of the Unification Church commemorate the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, in Seoul in 2012. Credit Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press

On Friday morning, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan was setting off to attend the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Olympics, as well as a side meeting with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, he declared that cooperation among their two countries and the United States was “unshakable” in the face of threats from North Korea.

Yet just last week some commentators were forecasting that the encounter could only be “tense”, citing, as ever, residual tensions stemming from Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula in 1910-45. As is routinely reported, Japan’s wartime treatment of so-called comfort women — women enlisted to sexually service Japanese troops — appears to endanger its ties with South Korea because, some say, it has not adequately apologized for its record.

The relationship between Tokyo and Seoul does seem to be as uncomfortable as it is important. In fact, though, it is far more important than it is uncomfortable — as the two governments well know.

Despite the nationalistic rhetoric that the countries’ leaders sometimes adopt with their respective domestic constituencies, ties between Japan and South Korea are fundamentally driven by pragmatic and hard-nosed considerations, especially about security. Too often this simple fact goes unacknowledged, even though it should be a source of some reassurance, especially at a time when North Korea seems increasingly belligerent and China more and more assertive.

For one thing, Japan helped South Korea develop its defense industry. When the United States got bogged down in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, Washington reduced its defense commitment to South Korea and asked the Japanese government to fill the gap. At first Seoul requested equipment for anti-guerrilla operations. After Tokyo declined, citing a no-arms-sales policy, President Park Chung-hee changed tacks, deciding to use financial and technical help from Japan to build up South Korea’s heavy industry — in order, he said, to establish a military industrial base that would serve national defense.

Under the 1965 treaty that had normalized relations between the two countries, the Japanese government would deliver a $500 million economic assistance package to South Korea. The Park administration earmarked a significant portion of that — some $120 million — to set up a major steel conglomerate.

Two decades later, North Korea’s conventional military forces were still far greater than those of South Korea. And so, arguing that it would take more than $15 billion and over a decade for the South to catch up to the North, Chun Doo-hwan, the South’s president at the time, asked Japan for “economic cooperation for national security”. In 1983, the Japanese government announced a $4 billion loan package to South Korea.

Today, Japan also contributes to South Korea’s security indirectly, by supporting the United States forces that would come to the South’s defense in the event of another war.

Japan hosts about 40,000 American troops. During the Korean War in 1950-53, it served as a major operating platform for United States forces fighting in support of South Korea: American soldiers who had been maintained in Japan after World War II were quickly sent to the Korean Peninsula, and American battleships, aircraft carriers, fighter jets and bombers operated from bases in Japan. Should conflict break out in South Korea today, the United States could, and presumably would, come to its ally’s help by using once again its main footholds in Japan, including its air force base in Yokota, naval base in Sasebo and Marine air station in Futenma.

What’s more, the Japanese government stands ready to support American military operations that would be deployed in the event of a conflict. In 1997, the United States and Japan agreed that Japan’s Self-Defense Force would provide noncombat assistance to United States troops “in situations in areas surrounding Japan” — a code phrase, in part, for the Korean Peninsula.

Over the years, United States-Japan cooperation for the defense of South Korea became so close that some specialists said it created a “virtual alliance” among the three countries, and have credited it with deterring war in East Asia despite North Korea’s steady pursuit of nuclear weapons and regular flare-ups and crises, such as in early 2003 and 2009.

Japan’s commitment to South Korea has only been strengthened since, bolstered by Mr. Abe’s return to power as prime minister in 2012. For all his nationalistic bluster, Mr. Abe’s hawkishness has served South Korea’s defense interests well.

In 2014, the Japanese government reinterpreted the Constitution to allow Japan to use force — under limited conditions — to defend itself or its allies, including the United States and South Korea. The legislature passed security legislation in 2015 authorizing Japanese forces to provide combat support to United States troops that might fight in the waters or air space around the Korean Peninsula. If necessary, they may, for example, shoot down a North Korean ballistic missile aimed at Guam or Hawaii, conduct anti-submarine operations to protect American naval forces or clear mines in waters near North Korea ahead of United States amphibious operations.

In other words, Japan’s participation in the defense of South Korea is consequential.

And yet it has largely been downplayed, if not deliberately ignored — mostly, again, for pragmatic reasons.

The idea of defending South Korea isn’t very popular in Japan, especially among people who identify as liberal pacifists. Some Japanese are wary of seeing their country dragged into someone else’s war or cannot fathom having to sacrifice for South Koreans who keep criticizing Japan for its historical record.

Some South Koreans, for their part, are uncomfortable about receiving security support from a government that once colonized them. Many South Korean journalists and academics I have spoken to over the years gladly acknowledge the importance of America’s security commitment, but regard any such contribution by Japan as suspect — or even, as one legislator has said, as an attempt to “seize hegemony in East Asia”.

But matters are different at the highest official levels, even since Mr. Moon became president in May. At first he seemed to adopt a harder position on Japan than his predecessor, notably by criticizing the agreement that she and Mr. Abe reached in 2015 in hopes of settling the comfort women issue. Yet the Moon administration has since announced that it would not try to renegotiate the treaty. Realpolitik, again. The memory of past belligerence recedes in the face of fresh threats.

Indeed. After meeting with Mr. Moon in Pyeongchang on Friday, Mr. Abe is said to have told reporters, “North Korea must recognize that the strong ties between Japan, the United States and South Korea will never waver”.

Narushige Michishita is the director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

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