South Koreans head to the polls Wednesday to elect a new leader, but it’s unclear if a fresh face in the presidential Blue House will be enough to help repair ties with Tokyo, which have tumbled to their lowest point in decades.
The two front-runners in the race — former prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party and the ruling Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung, a former governor of Gyeonggi province — remain neck-and-neck in their bids to become South Korea’s next leader.
But how will the South Korea-Japan relationship fare under a Yoon or Lee administration?
Two neighbors divided
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s time in office, a single five-year term that ends in May, has seen ties between the two neighbors deteriorate over a number of thorny historical issues related to Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula.
These issues have included renewed pushes for redress over wartime labor as well as the matter of “comfort women” — a euphemism for women who suffered under Japan’s military brothel system before and during World War II — after Moon effectively scrapped a 2015 “final and irreversible” agreement on the latter issue. More recently, ties have also faltered over Japan’s selection of the former Sado gold and silver mine as a UNESCO World Heritage candidate. Seoul has objected to the move, saying the mine used forced Korean wartime labor.
During Moon’s time in office, Japan has seen three prime ministers — Shinzo Abe, Yoshihide Suga and current leader Fumio Kishida — with all taking hard-line positions on the relationship.
The Japanese side maintains that all issues concerning property and claims related to its colonial rule were “settled completely and finally” under a 1965 agreement the two countries signed alongside a treaty that normalized ties.
Since taking office in September, Kishida’s foreign policy moves have largely focused on China and its growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as the North Korean nuclear and missile threat, with its ties to Seoul taking a back seat.
In a January speech before parliament, discussion of South Korea was limited to a mere sentence that reiterated Tokyo’s stance of “strongly” urging Seoul to “make appropriate responses” to repair the relationship.
Kishida’s remarks, as well as those of diplomatic insiders, have made clear that Japan has effectively shelved any bold attempts to revitalize ties as the prime minister focuses on the China challenge and building up Tokyo’s alliance with Washington.
“Overcoming the historical issues is something that I don’t hold out a lot of hope for,” said Sheila Smith, a Japan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You’ve got a generation of diplomats on both sides who now understand the political jeopardy of negotiations that go sour or don’t work. So I think there’s risk aversion on both sides.
“So you’d really need fairly significant political leadership to be able to overcome that,” she added.
In the rough and tumble world of South Korean politics, candidates have long been known to stress their hard-line positions on Seoul’s relationship with Tokyo — while also criticizing opponents’ supposedly soft stances — as a means of attracting votes.
But in the current campaign, which has been defined by a spate of scandals and a greater focus on the candidates’ personal flaws than on their policies, analysts say ties with Japan have been a nonissue, garnering little traction among voters. Both main candidates, well aware of the tight race, have also been reluctant to broach sensitive issues for fear of endangering their chances of victory.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday. | POOL / VIA REUTERS
Instead, domestic issues such as the country’s COVID-19 response, skyrocketing home prices in Seoul, stagnant growth and continued youth unemployment have been widely seen as the key factors that will determine the outcome.
Still, when the Japan relationship has bubbled up on the campaign trail, both front-runners have heeded to the traditional stances of their liberal and conservative parties.
Lee Jae-myung
Lee, a former mayor of the Seoul satellite city of Seongnam, is expected to echo Moon in his approach to Japan, including on the more contentious history and territorial issues.
While he has lambasted Tokyo’s claim to a pair of Seoul-controlled islets in the Sea of Japan, known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea, and criticized Japan over its colonial rule, Lee has also vowed to take “bold steps” and adopt a “pragmatic,” “‘two-track strategy” separating issues related to history and territory from economic, social and diplomatic cooperation.
In a recent interview — his first with Japanese media after becoming the Democratic Party’s official candidate — Lee said that if he is elected, he would be willing to hold talks with Kishida. Any talks between the two leaders would be the first in-person summit since December 2019.
But while Lee said he was “ready” for a summit meeting “to resolve the issues in a comprehensive way,” the liberal candidate also stressed his party’s line: The solution will have to come from the Japanese government — along with a sincere apology over the historical issues.
“The South Korean government has proposed Japan have open discussions based on court decisions, but Japan has been refusing it,” he was quoted as saying.
That position is unlikely to sit well with Tokyo, where officials have expressed exasperation with Moon’s stance.
According to Smith, Lee would have less incentive than Yoon to take the bolder approach to relations that he has advertised, considering his party and support base, which have traditionally taken a more antagonistic stance toward Tokyo.
“His political capital is built in large part on his position on Japan,” Smith said.
But Lee has said claims that he is a hawk on Japan are merely a “misunderstanding,” noting that he has a personal affinity for the Japanese people and thinks highly of their frugality, diligence and politeness.
Yoon Suk-yeol
In speeches, Yoon has pinned much of the blame for damaged relations with Japan on Moon’s approach to foreign policy, a position that stands in stark contrast to that of Lee. But he has raised eyebrows by pledging not to exploit historical tensions with Tokyo for domestic political gain.
Although Yoon lacks the political experience of his liberal rival, he served in multiple prosecutorial positions, rising to fame for investigating high-profile cases under the previous administration of conservative President Park Geun-hye, including the corruption scandal that prompted massive street protests and ultimately resulted in her impeachment and imprisonment. Moon later appointed him as the country’s top prosecutor, although the president clashed with Yoon over an investigation into Moon’s inner circle before his resignation last March.
In announcing his presidential bid that June, Yoon vowed to seek a comprehensive solution to soured ties with Japan, saying that he envisioned a government that would seek a “grand bargain… that puts all the related issues such as comfort women, forced labor, security cooperation and trade on the table.”
As a first step toward that goal, Yoon has said he would reopen a channel for “shuttle diplomacy” between the countries’ leaders, saying they should be able to communicate with an open mind at any time and on any topic.
Experts have said that conservative candidates, who tend to align more closely with the views of Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, have long been the favored picks in Tokyo. This election is unlikely to be any different.
“My impression is that political relations can improve more easily with Yoon compared to Lee, since he is focusing less on historical issues,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London. “I should say, however, that the foreign policy advisers of both Yoon and Lee are quite pragmatic. So I think that whoever wins, his team will seek to press for better political relations.”
Pardo pointed to areas where — despite the rancor between the two sides — cooperation continues, such as maritime security, intelligence-sharing and cyberdefense and in international organizations.
“It seems to me that the two countries understand the need for this type of cooperation,” he said.
North Korea
The two candidates have also stressed that they would implement vastly different policies on North Korea and China, two of Japan’s biggest security concerns.
Lee has said that he would leave much of Moon’s more conciliatory North Korea policy in place, suggesting an easing of crushing sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear program through a “snapback” mechanism in conjunction with simultaneous reciprocal actions carried out on a step-by-step basis as it works toward denuclearization.
Yoon Suk-yeol (left), the presidential candidate from the People Power Party, and Lee Jae-myung, the candidate from the ruling Democratic Party attend a debate in Seoul on Feb. 25. | BLOOMBERG
Yoon, meanwhile, has prioritized the importance of the U.S. alliance and “nuclear umbrella,” and has said sanctions must be maintained until the North’s complete denuclearization, a view more in line with Tokyo’s own position.
Both candidates have noted the importance of the contentious General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, which was nearly scrapped under Moon in 2019 as the countries’ relations plummeted to a fresh low.
As for the North’s unprecedented spate of weapons tests this year, Yoon has called the moves “proof” that Moon’s attempts to broker peace on the peninsula have failed. Lee’s camp has also condemned the launches, but vowed to stay the course, although a test of a more provocative weapon such as an intercontinental ballistic missile could force a harder-line approach.
For now, trilateral cooperation on the North Korean nuclear issue between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington remains the most high-profile issue bringing the two neighbors together.
Sino-U.S. rivalry
As for China, it’s unclear how far either candidate would be willing to join its ally Washington in taking on Beijing.
Yoon has signaled an openness to a bolstered alliance and a tougher line on China, as well as joining working groups of “the Quad” — which consists of four major Indo-Pacific democracies: the U.S, Japan, Australia and India — while considering a role in a so-called Quad-plus.
Lee, on the other hand, has said that when it comes to the U.S. and China — its biggest trading partner — “there is no reason for us to limit our own room to maneuver by picking one side.”
No prescription for better ties
Ultimately, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Smith said that she believes the Japanese “are still going to be skeptical” no matter who emerges victorious.
“What I hear from negotiators on the Japanese side is ‘We gave it a good shot, but the goalposts always moved,’” she said. “That’s the language Japanese negotiators and politicians often use.”
Despite the prevailing pessimism in Japan over restoring ties, Tokyo is well aware that leaving the relationship to fester for too long is not an option.
“(The relationship between Japan and South Korea) has become extremely tough,” the government’s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, told a news conference last month when asked about the upcoming election. “But we can’t leave it as it is.”
Matsuno, however, did not offer any prescriptions for the ailing ties.
For now at least, the two countries may have to take a page from their COVID-19 strategies, which effectively entail living with the reality that the coronavirus is extremely unlikely to be completely eradicated.
“Seoul and Tokyo understand that policy cooperation is necessary,” said Pardo. “And they have continued their security and diplomatic cooperation in recent years, in spite of political problems. I think that the two countries will have to learn to cooperate in spite of historical tensions that I think will never go away.”