The Tangled History of South Korean-Japan Rapprochement

On March 6, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s administration announced an agreement with the Japanese government that would resolve a major obstacle in bilateral relations by compensating World War II-era forced laborers. The history of diplomatic relations between these two countries has been filled with similar attempts by leaders to overcome past grievances and pursue more stable diplomatic relations. However, this has proven to be a tricky endeavor.

The end of World War II in 1945 also marked the end of Japan’s 35 years of imperial rule over the Korean Peninsula. With its newly gained independence, the South Korean government refused to pursue diplomatic and trade relations with Japan. The first president of South Korea, Rhee Syngman, was extremely nationalistic, and he used the strong anti-Japanese sentiments of the Korean public to garner support for and legitimize his government. 

When talks to normalize relations between the two countries began in the early 1950s, the first few sessions failed epically due to the recent memory of colonization and wartime atrocities. Rhee refused to meaningfully engage with Japan, and the Japanese delegate in the negotiations explicitly expressed the Japanese government’s stance that Japan’s occupation was beneficial to the Korean people. These remarks were met with backlash and stalled further negotiating sessions.

It took a military coup and U.S. encouragement to formally normalize relations between South Korea and Japan. Park Chung-hee, a former military general and politician, led a military coup that put him in power from 1963 to 1979. It was under Park’s military dictatorship that the biggest leaps in bilateral relations were made. 

These milestones were mostly economically focused. In the aftermath of World War II, South Korea was economically lagging behind its northern counterpart, so Park’s major goal while in power was successful economic development. During Park’s time in office, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the president of the United States, and his administration pushed for the normalization of relations between Japan and South Korea. Pressure from the United States increased along with its involvement in the Vietnam War. 

Unlike his predecessor, Park engaged in negotiations with Japan, sparking violent demonstrations from the Korean public, which opposed any overtures with the former colonial power. These demonstrations temporarily stalled the negotiation sessions.

However, in 1965, 20 years after the end of World War II, Park signed the Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea, marking the beginning of diplomatic relations. The 1965 treaty established that Japan recognizes the South Korean government as the sole legitimate government of the peninsula, and included $500 million in “economic cooperation” loans and grants to South Korean companies. The signing of the treaty sparked violent domestic demonstrations in South Korea, leading Park to invoke martial law to quell the anti-treaty protests.

Park is constantly credited for playing a pivotal role in transforming the South Korean economy, and the 1965 treaty was a crucial step in the country’s epic economic transformation. With the financial assistance from Japan, Park’s government was able to pursue its second five-year economic development plan and invest in infrastructure and private companies. 

However, the 1965 treaty has also been the source of many disagreements between the Japanese and Korean governments. The South Korean public to this day continues to call on the Japanese government to directly compensate Korean individuals who suffered under colonization. In response, the Japanese government cites the 1965 treaty and argues that it settled all issues stemming from occupation. This remains the Japanese government’s official stance today. The South Korean government, on the other hand, has argued that the 1965 treaty was intended to only settle property claims, not individual damages.

For the most part, South Korea’s autocratic and conservative leaders have been more likely to pursue normalized relations with Japan, at the expense of domestic support. For instance, the leader of the military junta that seized power after Park’s assassination in 1979, Chun Doo-hwan, also made improving bilateral relations with Japan a priority. 

In 1984, Chun was the first South Korean president to visit Japan since the end of imperial occupation, a very important gesture meant to symbolize moving forward in spite of historical grievances. While the result of Chun’s visit was improved security ties and a general apology from Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, the visit was met with opposition and demonstrations from the Korean public, who believed that the Japanese were using trade and investments to maintain economic control of South Korea, in lieu of colonization.

Neither Chun’s visit nor the 1965 treaty was enough to establish friendly relations between South Korea and Japan. When Kim Dae-jung, the first South Korean president from the liberal camp, was in power from 1998-2003, the relationship between Korea and Japan was extremely contentious. The two countries still could not reconcile historical territorial disputes over a set of islands known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japan. Also gaining prominence was the issue of Korean “comfort women,” who were beginning to publicly share their stories of sexual slavery at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. 

As more information was unearthed about the comfort women, these conversations raised arguments about whether the women’s personal claims were settled by the 1965 treaty. The Japanese government continued to maintain that all claims stemming from the occupation were settled by the treaty, while individual Japanese politicians expressed remorse and made informal apologies for the atrocities committed by the Japanese Empire and Imperial Army. 

It was in this hostile climate that Kim pursued friendlier relations with Japan. Kim and Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo signed the Japan-Korea Joint Declaration of 1998, which declared that the two countries agreed to “build a future-oriented relationship based on reconciliation.” The declaration included Obuchi’s apology for the hardship that Japan’s colonial rule caused. 

This push for increased engagement between the two countries proved ineffective, however. Just three years later, South Korea’s National Assembly attempted to revoke the Joint Declaration after a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment sparked by Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. The Korean public was also infuriated by news stories revealing that Japanese textbooks did not include information on war crimes, including the “comfort women.” Even though the declaration was not overturned in the end, the move by the National Assembly in that direction conveyed the Korean public’s dissatisfaction with their government’s attempts to bulldoze past historical transgressions in order to collaborate with Japan.

The last conservative president before Yoon, the controversial Park Geun-hye, took a major step in trying to lay to rest past Japanese grievances. The daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, Park faced external pressures from the United States to resolve historical issues and strengthen the bilateral alliance as North Korea grew more antagonistic and China continued to prove a threat to U.S. power. In 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Park’s government reached an agreement with Japan that would “finally and irreversibly” resolve the comfort women issue, one of the biggest obstacles to establishing a more cooperative relationship between the countries. The agreement created a foundation that received $8.3 million in donations from the Japanese government to compensate the surviving victims. In return, South Korea would no longer be able to bring up or criticize Japan for the issue.

While this deal was lauded by U.S. officials and politicians, comfort women advocacy groups, the opposition Democratic Party, and the general Korean public were outraged over what they perceived as a deal that allowed Japan to avoid acknowledging the comfort women system as a form of sexual slavery. One major criticism of this deal was that the surviving victims themselves were not at the negotiating table. Their long-standing demands – that the Japanese government take legal responsibility for its crimes by offering reparations and an official apology – were not met. Instead, Park’s deal allowed Japan to avoid taking legal responsibility and offered a concession from South Korea that the issue would no longer come up.

Park’s impeachment in 2016 not only scarred the legacy of this already controversial deal, but it also paved the pathway to President Moon Jae-in’s ultimate reversal of the agreement after he entered office in 2017. The relationship between the two countries further deteriorated in 2018, when the South Korean Supreme Court decided that Japanese companies were required to compensate World War II-era forced labor victims, another issue that the Japanese government argues was completely settled by the 1965 treaty. 

The constant back and forth on decisions that were meant to fully resolve these historical grievances contributed to heightened tensions between the two countries that ultimately bubbled over. The Japanese government expressed its frustration, arguing that South Korea continues to move the goalposts for resolution and reconciliation in order to humiliate Japan and gain more domestic political clout. The result was a complete breakdown in the relationship in 2019: the Japanese government removed South Korea from a whitelist of preferred trade partners and placed export controls on semiconductor materials. In response, South Korea also removed Japan from its trade whitelist and threatened to suspend the intelligence-sharing pact the two countries had (although the United States stepped in to prevent that suspension from actually occurring).

Yoon took office at this low point in bilateral relations and promised a “future-oriented” approach to improving diplomatic relations with Japan, reminiscent of language used by his predecessors. His government’s proposal on forced labor compensation, however, follows the pattern of past South Korean leaders who failed to reconcile historical grievances and maintain stable friendly relations with Japan. 

Like past deals that were made on a government-to-government basis, Yoon failed to take into account valid criticisms from the Korean public and opposition. South Koreans have continued to call for the Japanese government to take explicit and full responsibility for its complicity in the suffering of its colonial-era and wartime victims. The Yoon government’s recent deal with Japan completely ignores these requests, just as past governments have done. The deal states that current and future forced labor victims would be compensated through a public Korean foundation funded by compulsory donations from Korean companies that received economic assistance from the 1965 treaty. The Japanese government would allow Japanese companies to voluntarily donate to the foundation, but ultimately, would not directly compensate victims.

Yoon’s proposal blindly charges forward in warming relations with Japan, prioritizing bilateral relations without finding a nuanced way to resolve these grievances. Once again, the lack of direct compensation, acknowledgement, and apology will prove to become an obstacle to maintaining friendly relations. 

Based on these historical precedents, it is unlikely this agreement would withstand a change in administration and party leadership, given the immense criticism and backlash from the domestic opposition. If that is the case, Yoon’s deal will fare similarly to its predecessors, and fail to establish stable and friendlier bilateral relations between South Korea and Japan.