JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA: YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86T00590R000100050002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 27
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 29, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: January 1, 1985
• Content Type: REPORT

-ArML
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Japan and South Korea:
Yesterday, Today,
and Tomorrow F
Secret
EA 85-10012
January 1985
Copy 317
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Directorate of
Intelligence
Japan and South Korea:
Yesterday, Toda
and Tomorrow
Assistant for Regional Analysis, OEA
This paper was prepared by I Ithe 25X1
Office of East Asian Analysis. Comments and queries
are welcome and may be directed to the Special 25X1
Secret
EA 85-10012
January 1985
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Summary
Information available
as of 15 December 1984
was used in this report.
Japan and South Korea:
Yesterday, Today,
and Tomorrow1
The factors that have shaped the Japanese-South Korean relationship have
remained fairly constant since 1945. Positive pressures toward at least a
reasonably stable and generally accepted relationship have been exerted by
geographic proximity, economic ties that are important to both even
though in different ways, and the importance for each country of relations
with the United States, which has its own strong interest in cooperation be-
tween its two allies. But negative factors have also been strong: the heritage
of bitterness and misunderstanding left by three and a half decades of
Japanese colonial rule in Korea, the frictions of a conspicuously unequal
economic interchange, irritants relating to the status of the Korean
minority in Japan, and complications caused by the division of the
peninsula. The role of the relationship in the domestic politics of the two
countries has also affected its development, mostly in negative ways.
Over the past two years, Japan and South Korea have entered into a
relationship, which, although it rests upon foundations gradually erected
since 1965, nevertheless has been generally greeted as the opening of a new
era. The visits Japan's Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and President
Chun Doo Hwan of the Republic of Korea (ROK) exchanged in 1983 and
1984 have been credited with the inauguration of this new era and have be-
come its symbols.
Nakasone's visit to Seoul in January 1983 was, significantly, his first trip
abroad as Prime Minister. He not only went to Seoul first, he was also the
first Japanese Prime Minister to pay a state visit to South Korea.
(Nakasone's predecessor Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki broke with the
precedent that the first such visit should be to the United States. Suzuki,
however, in going to Southeast . Asia on his inaugural trip, followed in the
footsteps of earlier prime ministers in destination if not in timing.) Chun's
return visit in September 1984 was equally without precedent. Not only
,was it the first such Korean state visit to Japan, but it also derived great
symbolic weight from the fact that the ROK chief of state was received on
an equal basis by the same Emperor whom colonized Korea had been
forced to venerate as its own ruler.
The new cordiality of the relationship rests heavily upon the leadership that
Nakasone and Chun have provided. Both have been determined to
subordinate longstanding and still strong national antagonisms. But al-
though Nakasone and Chun have taken the lead, this same determination
not to let hostile emotions dominate the relationship seems also to extend
fairly widely within leadership circles in both countries. There are even
signs that attitudes at the popular level are beginning to soften.
Secret
EA 85-10012
January 1985
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Although considerable credit must be given to the style and determination
of the two leaders, the new era is also the outcome of changed circum-
stances. South Korea has assumed a different and more important global
position. Its economic dynamism places it in the forefront of the developing
world; it maintains trade relations with more than 160 countries and
interacts much more vigorously than in the past with its Asian neighbors as
well as with more distant countries. Its new status has been internationally
recognized by its selection as the site of the Asian Games in 1986 and the
Summer Olympics in 1988. Meanwhile, its Communist rival, the Demo-
cratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), despite its superior military
strength, has fallen considerably behind in the competition for political and
economic status.
Japan also has been moving out into the world, a trend that has become
more conspicuous under Nakasone's assertive leadership but that predates
his entry,into office. As Japan has become increasingly conscious of the
need to balance its economic progress by a higher political profile and of
Asia as a natural center of its interest, relations with South Korea have
come more into the forefront. With the strengthening of the economic and
political standing of South Korea, its importance for Japan has increased
while the attractions of North Korea have declined even for P'yongyang's
most loyal supporters on the left.
For each of the two countries, the relationship with the United States
remains both central and a link with the other. But, especially for Japan,
this third-country linkage, although still very important in the Tokyo-Seoul
relationship, is now somewhat less its dominant feature. For many years,
forthcoming Japanese policies toward South Korea largely reflected explic-
it concerns with the US relationship rather than with South Korea's
intrinsic importance to Japan. Today, much more than ever before, Japan's
interest in South Korea itself as neighbor, customer, and Asian partner is
an important determinant of policy.
From Seoul's perspective, the still very important US-Japanese relationship
no longer needs to be relied upon as heavily as in the past to force Japan
into generosity or to deter it from taking actions that might be contrary to
South Korean interests. These elements survive, but for South Korea Japan
has also become an independent actor with which it can work in partner-
ship, however cautiously, and to which it can look, even though somewhat
suspiciously, to use its own international standing on South Korea's behalf.
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Despite the progress that has been made, the relationship will continue to
be tested in years to come, as in the past, by fortuitous events and
differences over issues not yet resolved. The economic relationship, particu-
larly, will continue to be contentious, as indeed it is between Japan and its
other trading partners. Depending on what he does there and how the
government handles him, Kim Dae Jung's projected return to South Korea
could have political repercussions in Japan. And other events, impossible to
predict, could reawaken popular passions. Nevertheless, although difficul-
ties can be anticipated, the prospect is both countries will manage them
better than in the past.
The relationship will also continue to be affected by North-South develop-
ments. South Korean concerns that Japan will move independently in this
regard in ways contrary to South Korean interests are far from dead.
There remain also pressures on the Japanese Government to stay ahead of
the curve, and these may increase with what now seem to be more hopeful
prospects for relaxation of tensions between North and South. But the
more important pressures on Tokyo are those that move it toward giving
priority to its relations with South Korea, pressures that are reinforced by
its very clear consciousness of the limits on its own leverage. The Japanese
Government will want to be quite sure that it is being kept fully informed
by both the United States and South Korea. It will be prepared to add its
voice to that of the United States in the Korean-related dialogue with
China without conceding to Chinese pressures for gestures to the North,
likely to be seen as premature in Washington or Seoul. Should the process
go so far as to include multilateral discussions, Japan will wish to be
included if the Soviet Union participates. But it is most unlikely that Japan
will embark on any initiatives of its own that could disturb its relations
with the United States or South Korea.
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The Evolution of the Relationship
Japan's Guilt
The Korean Minority in Japan
5
Issues in the Economic Relationship
6
Japan Between the Two Koreas
8
Japan and the Defense of the South
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Japan and South Korea:
Yesterday, Toda
and Tomorrow
The Evolution of the Relationship
Even though their relative weights may have changed,
the factors shaping the Japanese-South Korean rela-
tionship have remained fairly constant since 1945.
Positive pressures to develop at least a reasonably
stable and generally accepted relationship have been
exerted by geographic proximity, economic ties that
are important to both even though in different ways,
and the importance for each country of relations with
the United States, which has its own strong interest in
cooperation between its two allies. But negative fac-
tors have also been strong: the heritage of bitterness
and misunderstanding left by three and a half decades
of Japanese colonial rule, the frictions of a conspicu-
ously unequal economic interchange, irritants relating
25X1 to the status of the Korean minority in Japan, and
complications caused by the division of the peninsula.
The role of the relationship in the domestic politics of
the two countries has also affected its development,
mostly in negative ways. In South Korea, govern-
ments and the opposition alike have used anti-
Japanese passions to mobilize political support. The
opposition, the media, and members of the academic
community have seen intimacy between Japan and
South Korea as contributing to the ability of authori-
tarian regimes to maintain themselves and as abetting
25X1 corruption in South Korean politics. Attacks on Japan
are thus frequently a way of indirectly attacking the
government
relations with Seoul.
In Japan, it is not prejudice against the Koreans-
although this is strong-that makes Korea an issue in
domestic politics. Instead, the linking of South Kore-
an and-Japanese security and the conflicting views
over Japan's proper stance in relations with the two
Koreas have inhibited the development of Tokyo's
In the first two decades after the end of World War
II, the negative factors dominated. On the Korean
side, memories of the hated Japanese occupation
remained vivid. South Korea's first president, Syng-
man Rhee-himself a longtime leader of Korea's
independence movement-deliberately fanned anti-
Japanese feeling to unite the South behind his rule. 25X6
For postoccupation Japan, a relationship with this
ountry had no advantages
that would prompt Tokyo to comply with South
Korean demands or to take steps that might seem to
bind Japan to the southern half of the peninsula.
Despite US efforts to bring the two countries togeth-
er, normalization was not achieved until 1965, four
years after Rhee's overthrow and replacement as
president by Park Chung Hee. The negotiations Park
initiated led to a normalization treaty and arrange-
ments for long-term Japanese economic assistance.
But they were extremely difficult and accompanied by
political uproar in both countries. In South Korea,
Park's political opponents mobilized anti-Japanese
emotions against his still far from consolidated re-
gime: an estimated 3.5 million people participated in
mass meetings and demonstrations against normaliza-
tion in 1964 and 1965. In Japan, both the left
opposition and elements within the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) attacked normalization as
drawing Japan further into the US alliance system,
foreclosing prospects for a relationship with the
North, complicating relations with China and the
Soviet Union, encouraging the movement of Japanese
capital to South Korea at the expense of the domestic
economy, and opening the Japanese market to a flood
of goods produced by cheap Korean labor.
Once normalization was achieved, however, the eco-
nomic benefits anticipated by Park, and by the Japa-
nese and Korean businessmen who had lobbied for it,
quickly became evident. Japanese funds began to flow
into South Korea-not only the $500 million in
official grants and credits promised as part of the
normalization agreement but also large-scale private
investment in South Korean industry. From 1965 to
1969, trade between the two countries quadrupled.
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Although the 1965 normalization laid the basis for an
increasingly active and important economic relation-
ship, there was no such corresponding development on
the political side. Such LDP leaders as Nobusuke
Kishi, Eisaku Sato, and Takeo Fukuda worked to
strengthen ties, but their results were almost invari-
ably expressed in economic rather than political
terms. An exiguous political relationship at the
government-to-government level, however, did not
discourage-and perhaps even encouraged-the de-
velopment of an informal network among influential
politicians and businessmen, supported by substantial
under-the-table financial transactions in both direc-
tions. Serving public as well as private purposes, this
network of personal ties performed useful facilitative
and ameliorative functions, at times even crucial ones.
This was the case in 1974, for example, when then
Korean Prime Minister Kim Chung Pil and former
Japanese Prime Minister Kishi, meeting together
privately, were able to devise a face-saving way out of
the bitter confrontation precipitated over the assassi-
nation of President Park's wife by a Korean resident
of Japan.
Since 1965, positive pressures pushing Japan and
South Korea together have generally outweighed neg-
ative ones, but not by much. Movement has been
excruciatingly slow and, on occasion, totally blocked,
with fortuitous incidents sometimes exacerbating poli-
cy differences. This was very much the case in 1973-
75. In August 1973, after a period of unusually
cordial South Korean-Japanese relations under Prime
Minister Sato, Japanese national sensitivities were
aroused when agents of the Korean Central Intelli-
gence Agency (KCIA) kidnaped South Korean opposi-
tion leader Kim Dae Jung in Tokyo. The failure of the
Korean Government to return Kim and cooperate in
investigating the incident heightened Japanese anger.
In 1974, fuel was added to the fire by harsh sentences
meted out to two Japanese students arrested in South
Korea on charges of complicity with South Korean
antigovernment student organizations.
In the poisoned atmosphere created by these events
and the consequent reduction of Japanese aid, the
assassination of his wife in August 1974 led President
Park into a campaign against Japan of unprecedented
ferocity. Korean feelings were aroused not only by
Japan's refusal to accept responsibility for a crime
committed by a member of its Korean minority, but
also by what seemed to be its rather perfunctory
expressions of sympathy for a deeply felt loss. To the
Japanese, Korean demands for stricter controls over
the P'yongyang-oriented General Federation of Kore-
an Residents in Japan (Chosen Soren) represented
unacceptable interference in Japanese domestic af-
fairs, adding insult to the injury already caused by
South Korea's refusal to accept responsibility and
take action in the Kim Dae Jung case. With the South
Korean relationship in almost total disarray, Japan, at
the same time, seemed to be moving closer to the
North. Foreign Minister Toshio Kimura's statements,
which suggested that Japan was dismissing the mili-
tary threat from the North and putting the Govern-
ments of North and South Korea on a juridical par,
were followed in December 1974 by unprecedented
Japanese Export-Import Bank credits to finance the
export of two industrial plants to North Korea.F--]
It was only in the spring of 1975 that the two sides
began to move toward each other once again. Al-
though Park's awareness of the need for continued
Japanese support for his economic development plans
was an important factor in Korean decisions, a height-
ened sense of external threat influenced Japanese as
well as Korean actions. Concern over how the fall of
South Vietnam would affect US policy elsewhere in
Asia, the belligerence of Kim 11-song's post-Vietnam
rhetoric, and the discovery of two North Korean
tunnels under the Demilitarized Zone underlined for
Seoul the importance of reconciliation with its Japa-
nese neighbor. The same developments were read in
Tokyo as requiring Japan to help preserve stability on
the peninsula by demonstrating its support for the
South and particularly for its economic progress. In
September, the reconciliation was completed when the
Eighth Japan-Korea Ministerial Conference was fi-
nally held and Japan agreed to continue its economic
assistance beyond the terms provided in the 1965
settlement. Welcoming the agreement, Deputy Prime
Minister Fukuda quoted the proverb, "The soil fur-
ther firms up after a spell of rain," as Chun Doo
Hwan was to do 10 years later in his audience with
the Emperor. For the rest of the 1970s, while "Korea-
gate," the human rights controversy, and President
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In the first two years of the 1980s, however, as
US-South Korean relations strengthened, South
Korean-Japanese relations went into another period
of decline. Hints of trouble appeared late in 1980
when Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki reportedly told
the South Korean Ambassador that Japan would end
its economic assistance if the death sentence against
Kim Dae Jung were carried out. Another cycle of
anti-Japanese demonstrations in Korea was then
matched by leftist-organized campaigns in Japan on
Kim's behalf. Not long after the commutation of
Kim's sentence had temporarily eased the strain,
Tokyo was alarmed and affronted by President
Chun's abrupt demand for a five-year, $10 billion
Japanese loan. There was outrage not only over the
amount demanded (about 70 percent of all projected
Japanese aid to Asia for the period), but also over the
public linkage Seoul wanted Tokyo to make between
support for the Korean economy and Japan's own
defense and over readily aroused suspicions that Chun
was using his cordial reception by the new Reagan
administration to blackmail Japan into new commit-
ments. Once again, in the familiar pattern, irritations
created by one issue were reinforced by another-in
this case, bitter South Korean complaints in the
summer of 1982 that Japanese textbooks were being
revised under Education Ministry auspices to gloss
25X1 over Japanese aggression and brutal behavior before
Carter's plan to withdraw US ground forces from
South Korea foreshadowed a possible weakening of
Washington's commitment to Seoul, Japanese-South
Korean relations remained unusually cordial.F--]
and during World War II.
Some progress was made in resolving these issues
before the inauguration in November 1982 of a new
Japanese cabinet under Yasuhiro Nakasone-a long-
time member of the pro-South Korean group in the
LDP leadership. It was, however, Nakasone's unprec-
edented state visit to South Korea in January 1983,
reciprocated by Chun's visit to Japan in September
seen as a new stage in the relationship.
The conviction of the two leaders that national self-
interest requires South Korea and Japan to move
toward a more solid relationship is neither original
with them nor a strictly personal view. However,
while evolutionary trends must be credited for some of
the progress in this direction, Nakasone has brought a
new style and sensitivity to the relationship, Chun has
been unusually responsive, and both leaders have
moved more rapidly and more independently of their
bureaucracies than has been customary in the past.F
The Issues
Despite what seems to be a real broadening of support
for a healthy Japanese-South Korean relationship,
the hostile emotions of the past have not disappeared.
Moreover, many of the issues that have troubled the
relationship since 1945 remain in one form or another.
And they are not likely to disappear before the end of
1986 (when Nakasone completes the second consecu-
tive term in office to which current LDP rules confine
him) or by 1988 (when the single presidential term to
which Chun has limited himself expires).
Two kinds of issues remain active: those that are
essentially bilateral and those that extend beyond
bilateral limits. The bilateral issues include the ques-
tion of Japan's guilt for its past subjugation of Korea,
the status of the Korean minority in Japan, and the
inequality of the economic relationship. Those that
exist in a broader international framework concern
Japan's role between North and South Korea and its
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responsibilities in connection with South Korean secu-
rity. Some of these issues, such as Japan's guilt, may
be fading somewhat. Others, such as the economic
relationships, may produce even more friction. Devel-
opments beyond either South Korean or Japanese
control could affect North Korean and security issues.
Japan's Guilt. Since 1945 the differences in their
approaches to the question of Japan's guilt in connec-
tion with the colonial experience have made a major
contribution to the psychological distance between
Japanese and Koreans. As the Koreans have seen it,
Japan's guilt is not confined to harsh colonial policies:
the suppression of their national language and its
forced replacement by Japanese, the imposition of
aspects of Japan's political culture that included
veneration of the Emperor, and the brutality with
which Japanese authority was often enforced are also
included. Japanese guilt in Korean eyes extends also
to the fact of colonization itself-the destruction of
the sovereignty of a proud and long-independent
country whose cultural achievements, transmitted
across the Korean straits, played an important part in
Japan's cultural development.
This expansive view of Japanese guilt was an impor-
tant element in both the abortive US-sponsored nego-
tiations of the 1950s and in those preceding the 1965
settlement. It formed the basis of demands that Japan
acknowledge the illegality of the agreements under
which it had exercised sovereignty over Korea from
the very date of their signing, explicitly apologize for
the past, pay reparations, make restitution for Korean
losses sustained during the colonial period and the
postsurrender evacuation, and abandon its own claims
for restitution for property seized in Korea after the
war.
The guilt thesis has remained an important ingredient
of Korean claims on Japan for economic assistance
and more generous terms of trade. This is one way,
Koreans argue, that Japan can atone for past crimes.
They are alert, also, to any signs that the Japanese are
seeking to gloss over their past misdeeds, as was most
recently evident in the Korean outcry against the
1982 Japanese textbook revisions.
The Japanese have been unwilling to admit that their
colonial occupation of Korea was either illegal or
immoral. They have argued it should be viewed as a
historical event consistent with international practices
at a time when colonies were attributes of great-power
status. They have seen no more reason for Japan to
apologize to Korea than for the United States to
apologize to the Philippines or Britain to Burma. And
although some have agreed that Japan's colonial rule
was harsh, most Japanese also believe it made impor-
tant contributions to Korea's modernization through
the development of industry and transportation, a
contribution for which the Koreans should be grate-
ful. It has also been difficult for the Japanese to
recognize any uniquely Korean contribution to their
own culture; they prefer, at most, to acknowledge
Korea as a transmission belt between China's culture 25X1
and their own.
In negotiations with South Korea, Japanese represent-
atives have been unresponsive to and irritated by
Korean appeals to their historical guilt. They have
carefully avoided linking economic assistance and
other agreements to reparations or other forms of
apology. Until the Nakasone-Chun era, the Japanese
had made only one official statement that the Koreans
could construe as an apology, and this at a rather low
level. The statement was made by Foreign Minister
Etsusaburo Shiina when he came to Seoul to initial
the 1965 treaty. "I really regret," he said, "that an
unfortunate period existed in the long history of the
two nations, and deeply reflect [the Japanese term 25X1
implies some degree of regret] on such a past."0
The apology issue was a central concern in the
preparations for the Chun visit. Nakasone had al-
ready expressed his regrets for the past. But what the
Emperor would say when he received Chun and how it
would compare with statements made to the United
States and China were very delicate problems in both
countries. The final formulation represented a careful
balance between Japanese and Korean sensitivities.
The Emperor said:
It is indeed regrettable that there was an unfortu-
nate past between us for a period in this century,
and I believe that it should not be repeated again.
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25X1
Nakasone's statement was a good deal more specific:
The fact remains that there was a period in this
century when Japan brought to bear great suffer-
ings upon your country and its people. I would like
to state here that the Government and people of
Japan feel a deep regret for this error and are
determined firmly to warn ourselves for the future.
Moreover, both the Emperor and the Prime Minister
acknowledged Korean cultural contributions, with
Nakasone's again adding specificity to a more vague
Imperial formulation, saying that, during most of the
several thousand years of relations between the two
countries, "Korea was the teacher and Japan was the
student."
Although the statements made by the Emperor and
the Prime Minister can be construed as the national
apology the Koreans have long desired, the degree to
which this desire has been satisfied remains uncertain.
For many Koreans, nothing the Emperor could say
would be enough. However, the statements made in
the course of the two visits, even though they will not
bury the past, should at least lighten the burdens the
past has placed on the relationship.
also held against them
The Korean Minority in Japan. Japanese feel superior
toward Koreans on many counts, among them Korea's
former subordination to their country and its current
less important position in the world than Japan's. The
Korean minority in Japan-now numbering some
670,000-serves in many respects to reinforce Japa-
nese prejudices. The Korean presence-accounting
for about 80 percent of all non-Japanese in Japan-is
an affront to Japan's concept of itself as a uniquely
homogeneous nation. The fact that, for the most part,
Koreans in Japan have remained at the bottom of the
economic ladder and are concentrated in a few urban
ghettos both restricts contacts between the two com-
munities and supports Japanese views of Koreans as
inferior people, prone to crude and criminal behavior.
Their disturbing role in Japanese politics, especially
through the alliance of Chosen Soren with the left, is
The minority presence also reinforces negative Kore-
an feelings. The way in which the minority originated
is another instance for Koreans of Japanese brutality
and contemptuous behavior. Although there has al-
ways been some voluntary migration of Koreans to
Japan, the vast majority of Koreans now living there
are the descendants of laborers forcibly brought to
Japan during the colonial period. Because they were
brought to Japan against their own will, the social and
legal discrimination imposed upon them and their
descendants is resented even more.
When World War II ended, there were 2 million
Koreans in Japan. The US occupation authorities
encouraged repatriation in principle and many re-
turned. Others, however, were discouraged by occupa-
tion regulations, intended to prevent excessive drains
on Japan's economy, which permitted repatriates to
take with them only 1,000 yen and such possessions as
they could carry. After the end of the occupation, any
Japanese desires to promote repatriation were frus-
trated by the unacceptable South Korean condition
that repatriates be permitted to bring with them all of
their property and sizable compensation as well. In
1959, when Japan responded eagerly to P'yongyang's
offer to accept-unconditionally and at North Korean
expense-all Koreans who wished to come, an embar-
rassed and angered South Korea broke off all dealings
with Japan for months.
Over the years Seoul's objective has not been repatria-
tion so much as a changed status for Koreans in
Japan. South Korean governments have consistently
sought a special position for Koreans based on the
"historical circumstances" of their presence in Japan:
on the one hand, preservation of their Korean nation-
ality and their right to South Korean protection; on
the other, the elimination of regulations that distin-
guish them from Japanese citizens. The most resented
legal discriminations are those of the Alien Registra-
tion Law. These require resident Koreans, like other
aliens, to carry identification cards at all times and to
be fingerprinted every five years. In addition to
demands that Koreans be exempted from these re-
quirements, South Korea has pressed Japan to provide
increased employment opportunities and to extend
national pension benefits to Koreans 35 and older.
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Although the Japanese agreed in 1965 to provide
permanent residence status to Koreans who had been
living in Japan before 1945 and to their descendants,
they have been unwilling to alter their legal status
further. The communique issued at the end of the
Chun visit said merely that Japan will "continue its
25X1 efforts" to improve the legal status and treatment of
resident Koreans. Movement will not be rapid, espe-
cially with respect to registration and fingerprinting,
because the Justice Ministry is strongly opposed to
change and public government statements have pre-
cluded alteration any time soon.
alien registration requirements.
Moreover, Korean interests are divided: Seoul must
continue to press the fingerprinting /registration issue
for political reasons, but, at the same time, it does not
want to reduce the ability of the Japanese police to
surveil Koreans sympathetic to the North. Over time,
the problem may be reduced by recent legal changes
that make it possible for children of a Japanese
mother and an alien father to claim Japanese citizen-
ship. Moreover, although it is too soon to say that
Japanese popular attitudes are.changing, there are
straws in the wind-for example, the decision of the
LDP and the two moderate opposition parties to
petition the'government to exempt Koreans from the
Issues in. the Economic Relationship. Economic issues
have assumed somewhat different forms as South .
Korea's economic status and role in the global econo-
my have changed. At first, aid issues were dominant:
how much aid could Japan be induced to provide and
on what terms? More recently, as South Korea has-
moved into the front ranks of developing countries,
aid issues have been joined by others relating to trade
and technological transfer. A new element has also
entered into the economic relationship as South Kore-
an manufactures, including steel products, ships, and
consumer electronics, have begun to compete with
Japanese products in third-country- markets.F_~
There is no economy with which the South Korean
economy is more closely linked than with the-Japa-
nese. Two-way trade runs about $10 billion a year.
South Korea is Japan's second-largest trading part-
ner; Japan is South Korea's second-largest customer,
after the United States, taking 16 percent of its
exports in 1983. As a supplier, Japan outranks all
others, producing 21 percent of all South Korean
imports in 1983-33 percent if we exclude energy.
Japan is even more prominent in direct foreign invest-
ment. By 1983, cumulative net Japanese investments
totaled $843 million or'49.5 percent of the total,
compared with $471 million or 27.7 percent for the
United States.
Many Japanese and many Koreans have, of course,
profited from this intense economic interchange, and
important elements of the business communities of the
two countries are closely linked. Japanese business-
men with large interests in South Korea constitute an
influential Korean lobby in Japan; their South Korean
counterparts, although by no means as politically
potent as the Japanese business class, nevertheless,
manage to bring to bear on the ruling authorities their
concern with maintaining a reasonably smooth South
Korean-Japanese relationship. There are organiza-
tional as well as informal ties; in 1983, for example, in
the 15th of a series of private-sector conferences, 200
businessmen from both countries met in Seoul.F_
At the same time, however, irritants normal to a close
but unequal economic interchange are magnified by
the emotional baggage of the broader relationship.
South Korean complaints against Japanese economic
behavior are much like those of Japan's other trading
partners: Japan is unfair, it makes excessive use of
nontariff barriers, and so forth. But resentment is
greater because Korea is convinced that Japan's
historical role imposes on it an obligation to give
Korea special help and consideration. Instead, the
Koreans charge, Japan discriminates against them. In
July 1984, for example, the South Korean Ministry of
Trade and Industry accused Japan of erecting higher
tariff and nontariff barriers against South Korea's
exports than against those of other countries. Japan, it
alleged, bows more readily to ASEAN's demands, .-
because ASEAN's population is much larger and its
competitive potential much less, and to those of the
United States and Europe, because they are more
powerful. Some even see Japan's economic success as
first made possible by Korea's suffering. They are all
too conscious that, while their country was being
devastated by the Korean war, Japan was profiting 25X1
heavily from the war boom.
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The Japanese, for their part, see no merit in Korean
arguments of this kind and, indeed, resent them. They
see the Koreans as ungrateful for the role Japan
played in underwriting South Korea's remarkable
growth and for the very large share of Japan's
concessional loans it continues to enjoy. The Koreans,
they argue, should stop pressing for a one-way street
of Japanese concessions; instead, Japan and South
Korea should be equal partners with both responsible
for removing trade impediments.
1982 to $1.9 billion
Today, the burning issues are the trade deficit and
technology transfer. The intensity of Korean feelings
about the trade deficit with Japan is shown by the
Koreans' unique practice of citing it in cumulative
terms, currently as a total deficit from 1965 to 1983
of almost $27 billion. In fact, during this period, there
has been a substantial percentage reduction in the
gap, to a considerable extent because of growing
South Korean self-sufficiency in such areas as steel
milling and shipbuilding. Thus, while in 1965 South
Korea's imports from Japan were 3.8 times greater
than its exports to Japan, in 1982 they were only 1.6
times greater. Nevertheless, the Japanese surplus is
large and in 1983 rose to $2.8 billion after falling in
leather and knitwear.
The gap reflects continued South Korean dependence
on Japan both for capital goods and for intermediate
industrial products that already contain high added
value and are intended for further processing. But the
continued very large annual deficit, South Koreans
contend, also reflects trade practices that restrict their
access to the Japanese market. They have put particu-
lar pressure on Japan to expand its application of the
Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) to Korean
products and to reduce tariffs on Korean marine and
farm products and on such light industrial products as
Although the Japanese have made some concessions
to Korean demands, they generally regard them as
excessive. They resent the Koreans' expressing the
trade imbalance in cumulative terms and sometimes
even argue that Japan's export surplus should be seen
as benefiting Korea, because so much of what South
Korea imports is processed for highly profitable sales
to other countries. Of all Japanese imports from
South Korea, they point out, one-third is already
covered by GSP, and this represents 25 percent of all
of Japan's GSP imports. In other cases, the need to
consider Japan's own small-scale domestic producers
and declining industries is cited. Japan also complains
of South Korean trade practices, charging that South
Korea has erected its own barriers against Japanese
products and investments and, in a mirror image of
South Korean complaints, argues that Seoul's own
liberalization measures are directed only at placating
the United States and are of no benefit to Japan.
Despite the heat generated by the trade deficit, 25X1
Korean businessmen and officials, in fact, recognize
that, even if Japan complied with South Korean
demands for market access, the trade deficit would
continue because of the structural differences between
the two economies. These differences, of course, may
narrow over time and the centrality of the relationship
may decline as Korean global trade continues to
expand faster than Korean trade with Japan. How-
ever, despite talk of looking to alternative sources,
there is little question that Japan will continue for
some time to be the preferred and most economical
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supplier, given its proximity, its familiarity with Kore-
an requirements, the efficiency of its trading compa-
nies, the reputation of its product, its followup, and its
service. Thus, rather than expecting any real solution
of their trade imbalance with Japan, South Korean
economic leaders look to increased sales elsewhere to
help balance their global trade while looking to Japan
to provide technology that will help South Korea
move further up the economic ladder.
On technology transfer-as on other issues-the dif-
ferences between the two countries are wide. The
Koreans would prefer government-to-government ar-
rangements in which, once appropriate guidelines had
been established, Japanese firms would respond to
Korean requirements according to the dictates of
administrative guidance. They see Tokyo's claim that
the government cannot commit private industry in
this manner as mere foot-dragging. They believe that
what really lies behind the government's position is
Japan's determination to avoid enhancing South Ko-
rea's already significant ability to compete in third-
country markets. This so-called boomerang effect is
undeniably a strong element in Japanese industry's
attitude toward transferring high technology to
Korea.
At times the prospect of lucrative sales works in the
opposite direction. Initially, Japanese steel producers
were reluctant to provide assistance to the second
Pohang integrated steel complex, having seen their
sales to Korea decline as the first Japanese-assisted
steel facility at Pohang increased its output. In due
course, however, the prospect of the immediate profits
won out and the Japanese agreed to provide the
requested plant and technology. Other such deals
have been made, government-to-government technical
training agreements have been reached (although thus
far on a very -limited basis), and Tokyo has agreed to
give positive consideration to technology transfer from
semigovernmental enterprises. Nevertheless, technol-
ogy transfer is not likely to occur to the extent and
with the speed that Koreans desire, and continued
contention over this issue can be expected. F_
Japan Between the Two Koreas. Concerned Japanese
recognize that few events would cause their country
greater problems than a war between North and
South Korea. At the same time, they prefer the
present division of the peninsula to any conceivable
alternative. In fact, they find it hard to envisage
alternatives. They do not see any realistic prospects
for peaceful reunification. Nor do they think it possi-
ble that North Korea will attempt to impose reunifi-
cation by force, at least as long as the United States
maintains a plausible deterrent and the Sino-Soviet
equation undergoes no basic change. Accepting divi-
sion as the only likely status for the indefinite future,
they would prefer it to exist on a more stable basis and
with at least the tacit acquiescence of North and
South Korea as well as of their great-power patrons.
Although Japan sees its interests best served in the
reduction of tensions between the two Koreas and has
regarded some balance in its own relations between
North and South as contributing to this end, it has in
fact tilted toward the South. The importance. to Japan
of its alliance with the United States has been
extremely influential in bringing this about. Increas-
ingly, however, Japan's policies toward the North
have also been influenced by its own desire, independ-
ent of its ties to the United States, to preserve and
expand relations with the South.
Japan's relations with North Korea have been both a
bone of contention between Tokyo and Seoul and an
issue in Japanese domestic politics, with the pro-
P'yongyang sympathies of a substantial element of
Japan's Korean minority playing a somewhat compli-
cating role. Customarily, Japan's Socialist and Com-
munist Parties have been pro-P'yongyang and anti-
Seoul and have aligned themselves on Korean issues
with the Chosen Soren. It is from this side of the
political spectrum that the strongest pressures have -
come for movement toward official relations with the
North, for increased trade, and for contacts and
exchanges of all sorts. It is also from this side of the
spectrum that the South (but not the North) is most
vehemently criticized for its authoritarian practices
and attacked for such "insults" to Japan as the
kidnaping of Kim Dae Jung. And, finally, it is on this
side of the spectrum that suspicions are most readily
aroused about Japanese security relationships with
South Korea.
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Support not so much for North Korea as for a more
equidistant policy has come from some newspapers,
especially the Asahi Shimbu, and from academicians,
as well as from within the LDP and the national
government bureaucracy, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, and the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI) especially. A number of consider-
ations are involved: the belief among Japanese in
general that, if a problem exists, it is better for all
parties involved to be in contact with each other;
interest in trade with the North; and the conviction
that isolating P'yongyang will only reinforce its in-
transigence and bellicosity. Rather than contribute to
the isolation of North Korea, it is argued, Japan
should be working to reduce tensions on the peninsula
by maintaining contact with the North; not only do
history and proximity support this role, but it is also
one that Japan, especially because of its limited
influence, can more appropriately perform than the
United States. As one Japanese specialist put it, "The
American card is much more powerful than the
Japanese card and, therefore, must be played much
more carefully."
The American card is, in fact, a major worry, and
within the government there is a constant concern
that it might indeed be played. The Japanese fear the
United States, without consultation, might inflict on
Japan a Korean version of the "China Shock," leaving
the government open to attack from LDP factions as
well as the opposition for a major foreign policy
failure. This fear, and aspirations in government and
conservative circles for a more independent foreign
policy, put pressure on policymakers to stay at least
somewhat ahead of the United States in relations with
North Korea. Looking to the future also, LDP leaders
believe it is important to disabuse P'yongyang of the
idea that its only channel to Tokyo is through the left;
the two chairmen of the nonpartisan Dietmen's
League for Promotion of Japanese-North Korean
Relations have both been LDP members.
Although Japan has consistently sought to keep the
door to North Korea at least slightly open, South
Korea has sought recognition from Japan as the-sole
legitimate government for all of Korea, has opposed
any official contact between Tokyo and P'yongyang,
and has been deeply suspicious and resentful of
trading connections-especially those, whether legiti-
mate or covert, that could strengthen North Korean
military capabilities. Japanese dealings with the
North in the name of reducing tensions, the South
Koreans have argued, could have the opposite effect,
encouraging the North Koreans to discount the risks
of provocative conduct. If there is to be some improve-
ment in Japan's relations with North Korea, Seoul
contends, this. should be part of a bargain-such as
cross recognition-from which South Korea also
benefits.
Japan's position in the contest for legitimacy between
North and South was a highly contentious issue in the
negotiations of the 1950s and 1960s. South Korea
pressed for recognition in principle of its authority as
the legitimate government of all of Korea. But the
Japanese, unwilling to foreclose the possibility of some
sort of relationship with the North, refused to accept
In the end, compromise was reached by using lan-
guage legitimized by the UN General Assembly in
1948 after elections had been held in the South under
UN supervision. In the normalization treaty, Tokyo
recognized the South Korean Government as "the
only lawful government in Korea as specified in the
resolution 195(116) of the UN General Assembly."
Leaving the South Koreans to interpret this statement
as they might, Foreign Minister Shiina was careful to
explain to the Diet the very limited construction the
Japanese Government placed upon the statement:
"the problem of North Korea is still in the state of
carte blanche. The area of the treaty application is,
limited only to the area where the present jurisdiction
of South Korea extends."
Shiina's explanation notwithstanding, in the political
controversy over normalization a principal issue was
the fact that Japan's formal relationship with the
South was unmatched by any with the North. This, it
was argued, helped to postpone reunification.
Meanwhile, as early as 1955-following the principle
of "separating politics from economics" established
for similar dealings with China-Japan made unoffi-
cial trade arrangements with the North in the form of
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so-called peoples agreements. It was not until the
early 1970s, however, with the initiation of contacts
between the two Koreas and P'yongyang's economic
opening to the West, that the trade flow became more
than a trickle. In January 1972, a five-year trade
agreement was negotiated by the Dietmen's League
for Promotion of Japanese-North Korean Friendship
(organized in 1971 under the chairmanship of LDP
member, Chuji Kuno). From $58 million in 1970,
trade grew to over $360 million in 1974. In the
following years, however, North Korea began to face
very serious economic problems. Having assumed
large foreign debts through extensive purchases of
whole plants and technology, P'yongyang became
unable to meet its interest payments as oil prices rose
while the market for its own mineral exports declined
sharply. In 1976, North Korea became the first
Communist state to default on its debt repayments,
and its foreign trade declined precipitously.F_~
By 1979 North Korea reached a rescheduling agree-
ment with its Japanese creditors to whom by this time
it owed $380 million in principal and interest. Since
then, North Korea's debt has fallen to about $240
million and trade has increased, mostly on a cash
basis since ExIm credits are precluded and Japanese
firms are unwilling to extend credit. Trade now runs
between $400 million and $500 million a year with
Japan enjoying a considerable surplus; 80 percent is in
the hands of enterprises owned by Koreans resident in
Japan, but a number of large Japanese firms are also
involved.
Fear that North Korea will use the economic relation-
ship with Japan to promote a political one also enters
into South Korean attitudes. This is clearly one of
P'yongyang's objectives, and it has been aided and
abetted by the Dietmen's League and other such
pressure groups. South Koreans are acutely sensitive
to the possibility that the Japanese Government will
accede to these pressures and their apprehensions are
easily aroused. Such events as Kuno's calls on high
government officials before he embarks on one of his
frequent trips to North Korea and Foreign Minister
Abe's conversation with a North Korean official at a
Foreign Ministry reception are almost invariably seen
with alarm as signs that Japan is about to enter into
some sort of official relationship with the North. F_
In fact, North Korean efforts in this regard have been
quite unsuccessful. The recently renewed unofficial
fisheries agreement is a case in point. Reached in
1977 and described by North Korea as an act of
friendship toward the Japanese people, the agreement
permitted Japanese to continue to fish, as they had for
centuries, in waters now contained within North
Korea's 200-mile economic zone and without fees or
licenses.
annually.
Extended twice, the agreement's expiration in June
1982 was preceded by an unusually large number of
seizures of Japanese fishing boats for alleged violation
of North Korean regulations. It soon became evident
that North Korea was seeking to play upon the need
for a number of LDP Diet members, including Abe
himself, to protect the interests of their constituents
among fishermen in central Honshu whose catch in
North Korean waters was valued at $20-50 million
With Kuno as its messenger, P'yongyang insisted that
fisheries negotiators on the North Korean side include
officials whose status or previous behavior in Japan
had made them unacceptable in Tokyo. It was also
indicated that the price tag for a new agreement
might include the opening of trade offices in P'yong-
yang and Tokyo, the establishment of a direct Tokyo-
P'yongyang air service, the exchange of official visits,
and steps toward expanding economic relationships.
Despite apprehension in Seoul, however, the Japanese
Government stood firm, its resistance to any such
proposals stiffened by the fact that the interests of the
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the Friendship Leagues of both sides.
fishermen affected were balanced by the interests of a
larger group who relied on access to South Korean
waters. In due course, the North Koreans yielded. In
October 1984, the agreement was renewed without
preconditions and, as in the past, under the auspices of
South Korea will continue to watch Japan's economic
relationship with the North for signs of major growth
or political exploitation. Nevertheless, the issue has
become somewhat less sensitive as Japan under Naka-
sone and in the wake of the Rangoon incident has, in
fact, aligned itself more overtly and specifically than
ever before with South Korea and with its policies on
the division of the peninsula.
The Rangoon incident was a key event, reinforcing
feelings of fellowship that had been stimulated by
Japan's highly cooperative and sympathetic behavior
after the KAL shootdown had taken the lives of
nationals of both countries. Some Koreans criticized
Japan for not having sent a higher level delegation to
the funeral ceremonies for the Rangoon victims or for
not imposing stiffer sanctions. Most, however, seemed
to appreciate Japan's behavior as demonstrating a
new and welcome warmth and sympathy. At the
funeral, Foreign Minister Abe expressed Ja an's
wholehearted support of South Korea.
Tokyo would not be permitted.
After Burma charged North Korea with the crimes
and broke off its own relations, the Japanese Govern-
ment announced that:
? Japanese diplomats would be instructed to refrain
from all contact with North Korean officials in third
countries.
? Japanese officials would not be permitted to travel
to North Korea.
? Visas would not be issued to North Korean officials
and the entry of nonofficial Koreans would be
severely limited.
? Special charter flights between P'yongyang and
No formal restrictions were imposed on the activities
25X1
Their response to Rangoon has not altered the Japa-
nese view of the long-term danger of isolating P'yong-
yang. In July 1984, following up on remarks he had
made during his trip to Seoul earlier in the month,
Abe made a very carefully hedged statement in the
Diet. "The government," he said, "did not intend to
continue the Rangoon sanctions indefinitely." But he
tied change in existing policy to hopes "that there will
be a change in the situation in the future that would
lead to a lifting of the measures." He refused, how-
ever, to respond to questions about what changes
would be required.
Whatever apprehensions the Koreans may have had
that Abe's remarks portended some early Japanese
Government action were assuaged when Nakasone's
comments reassured them during the Chun visit that
Japan would make no changes in its policy toward
North Korea without first consulting South Korea
and the United States and by the wording of the joint
communique.
The communique made clear Japan's support for the
South Korean call for resolution of the Korean prob-
lem by direct talks between North and South. And,
for the first time, Japan endorsed the South Korean
proposal-opposed by the North-for the admission
of both Koreas to the United Nations. Also, welcome
tribute was paid to South Korean policy in the
statement that the Prime Minister "highly appreciat-
25X1
25X1
ed that the defense efforts" of South Korea "together 25X1
with its efforts for dialogue have contributed to the,,
maintenance of peace on the Korean Peninsula."
The Japanese resisted Seoul's pressures for statements
recognizing South Korea as the only legitimate gov-
ernment on the peninsula and endorsing the position
that the United States and Japan should not seek
improved relations with North Korea until the USSR
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recognizes South Korea. Otherwise, however, the
Japanese went reasonably far in endorsing South
Korean positions. At his luncheon for Chun, Naka-
sone went even further in his own remarks, declaring,
"There can be no peace and stability for Japan
without long-term and stable relations of friendship
and cooperation with the Republic of Korea."0
Tokyo also seems to have altered its view of how
Japan can best promote stability on the peninsula.
The utility of an opening to the North has been
distinctly downgraded and Japan's contribution to the
strength and self-confidence of the South given much
greater importance. Chun, for his part, seems to
envisage more of a role for Japan on North-South
issues than the distrustful Koreans had been willing to
contemplate in the past, as witness his apparently
spontaneous public suggestion while in Japan that
Tokyo might be a suitable venue for talks between the
leaders of the two Koreas. More immediately, South
Korea seems to have accepted quite readily the possi-
bility of using the Japanese as interlocutors on their
behalf with the Chinese. Clearly, these developments
reflect South Korean confidence in Japan's intentions.
But they may also reflect the same uneasiness over
the possibility that an independent Washington-
25X1 Beijing agreement on the Korean question could have
developed in the wake of the US opening to China in
1971.
Real regression from the climate of understanding on
North-South issues, as it has developed in the last two
years, seems unlikely. Temperatures could be raised,
as they have been in the past, by Japanese and Korean
failures to take each other's sensitivities into account,
by intermittent use of the North Korean issue in
Tokyo or Seoul as a makeweight in disputes over
other issues, or by clumsy efforts by Japanese politi-
cians to advance their own fortunes through well-
publicized foreign policy initiatives.
From Japan's perspective, however, opportunities to
profit economically or politically from significantly
expanded relations with the North are intrinsically
small, and smaller still in comparison with the impor-
tance of the relationship with the South. Seoul may
react unfavorably from time to time to continued
Japanese business and other contacts with the North,
if only for domestic political reasons and to remind
Japan of the limits of acceptable behavior. But the
prospects that either side will permit frictions on this
score to get out of hand are very low.
Even less so than in the past, economic considerations
are not likely to lure the Japanese into unacceptable
political behavior. Businessmen will respond to oppor-
tunities for profitmaking should P'yongyang persist in
its apparently heightened interest in economic devel-
opment. But they will respond with very real caution,
past experience's having made them very skeptical of
the prospects for doing business in a big way in the
North. They will continue to look for ways to recoup
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their large investments of the past, but they will not
be rushing into new ones; North Korea's recently
announced policy welcoming joint ventures was re-
ceived with great skepticism.
Japanese businessmen are also very watchful of the
impact any deal with the North might have on their
much more substantial interests in the South; the
Koreans are well aware of their leverage in this regard
and are quite willing to use it. Thus, and admittedly
as an object lesson, in May 1984 South Korea closed
its ports to the Iino Shipping Line, the principal
Japanese shipping company that delivers Japanese
goods to the North Korean port of Chongjin (in the
expansion of which it assisted) for transhipment to
Soren, according to Japanese Government statistics
only 10 percent are today, with 24 percent affiliated
with the pro-South Korean Mindan, and 66 percent
unaffiliated.
China.
Japanese public opinion on North-South issues is also
changing as South Korea's international economic
and political standing has outdistanced that of the
North by a considerable margin. The Dietmen's
League is in parlous shape: in the December 1983
elections, 39 of its members were defeated, including
Kuno himself, and it took seven months to find an
LDP member who
was prepared to replace him. The moderate opposition
parties-Komeito and the Democratic Socialist
Party-have long since established contacts with
South Korea. Even those further to the left-the
Socialist Party under its current president, Masashi
Ishibashi, and its trade union federation ally, Sohyo--
having failed to move the government toward equidis-
tance between South and North, now seem to be
moving away from their own single-minded devotion
to the North.
Although there are strong divisions among the Social-
ists on this issue, Ishibashi's impact was clearly
reflected in the expected party statement condemning
the Chun visit. It confined itself to the impropriety of
receiving the leader of the South in the absence of
similar treatment of the North but omitted the cus-
tomary vitriolic attacks on South Korean policy. The
trend in Sohyo is equally evident, symbolized in May
1984 by the visit of a Sohyo delegation to Seoul, the
first such visit since normalization. Even within the
Korean community, support for the North has de-
clined significantly. Whereas at one time more than
half the Koreans in Japan were affiliated with Chosen
Japan and the Defense of the South. The relationship
between South Korea's security and Japan's has been
more of an issue between Washington and Tokyo than
between Seoul and Tokyo. Nevertheless, the question
has entered into the South Korean relationship, espe-
cially in recent years. Here, as in other issues, there
has been some evolution, in this case, one that has
been especially glacial and subliminal. Japan, much
more directly than in the past, now acknowledges the
relationship between South Korean security and its
own, and some low-level and largely unpublicized
cooperation has developed between the military serv-
ices of the two countries. Nevertheless, the whole
question of. a security relationship between them
remains highly sensitive on both sides of the straits.
Japan's historical concern that the Korean Peninsula
not fall into hostile hands was, of course, an important
motive for the establishment of Japanese rule there.
In much of the postwar period, however, it has been
politically difficult for any Japanese government to
acknowledge a direct link between Japan's security
and that of South Korea. It is still politically impossi-
ble to suggest any direct Japanese participation in
South Korea's military defense. The sensitivity of the
issue reflects a number of concerns that have com-
bined in different ways since 1945.
One of the most important concerns is the desire of
the vast majority of Japanese to preserve their 25X1
"peace" constitution. Article IX, which has been
interpreted to permit Japan to maintain armed forces
strictly for its own defense, is also read to preclude
sending Japanese troops abroad, even under UN
peacekeeping auspices, and to preclude participation
in any kind of collective security arrangement. Anoth-
er concern is to avoid involvement in situations and
actions that could heighten confrontation-Japan's
moving closer to South Korea militarily, it has been
argued, will only lead to increased Chinese and Soviet
military support of the North.
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Unfavorable attitudes toward Korea and Koreans
have also played a part. In particular, there are
questions in Japan, as in the United States, about how
the claims of South Korea as a professed member of
the non-Communist to the support and protection of
Western democracies can be reconciled with its au-
thoritarian practices and human rights violations.F_
For the Koreans, the idea of any direct participation
of Japanese military forces in the defense of Korea is
completely intolerable, as would be the idea of the
presence at any time of any large number of uni-
formed Japanese on Korean soil. Although South
Korea welcomes the US-Japanese security tie, Kore-
ans resent the extent to which the United States
justifies its own large investment in South Korea's
defense as required to support the prime US interest
in the security of Japan. They are concerned that US
pressures on Japan to increase its self-defense capabil-
ities could in time lead to the resurgence of Japanese
military ambitions. They also fear that, to lighten its
own burdens, the United States might try to assign its
responsibilities for the defense of South Korea to
Japan.
The Koreans see some incompatibility between Ja-
pan's perceptions of the threat to regional security,
which is centered on the USSR, and their own, which
is centered on North Korea. They deduce from this
that a defense relationship with Japan, while adding
very little to their security, might involve them in
unwanted conflict. However, even while rejecting a
direct defense tie with Japan, the Koreans do want
Japan to acknowledge that South Korea constitutes
the frontline of Japanese defense. This, in their view,
reinforces the deterrent to North Korean aggression
and brings home to the Japanese their obligation to
help compensate for South Korea's heavy investment
in military strength with economic and political sup-
port.
Although Japan in recent years has come much closer
to acknowledging this relationship, its movement in
this direction has been slow and erratic. During the
Korean war, Japan, still under US occupation, was
not required to take an official position or to acknowl-
edge the heavy logistic use of Japan as anything more
than obedience to the fiat of occupation authorities.
However, in September 1951, in anticipation of the
conclusion of the peace treaty, Prime Minister
Shigeru Yoshida committed Japan to "permit and
facilitate the support in and about Japan ... of the
forces engaged in ... United Nations action" in East
Asia. This commitment was both broadened and
made more specific in the 1952 US-Japan Security
Treaty, which accepted the right of the United States
to use its forces "in and about Japan" to defend the
peace of Asia. Revisions in 1960 then defined the
functions of US bases in Japan as contributing to
Japanese security and also to "the maintenance of
international peace and security in the Far East" and
permitted the United States to operate from these
bases in the event of armed attack outside Japan
elsewhere in Asia.
The security treaty remained controversial in Japan
throughout the 1960s, and the charge that normaliza-
tion with South Korea would draw Japan still deeper
into the US alliance system was an element of the
opposition to establishing diplomatic relations with
Seoul. In 1969, however, the statement in the Nixon-
Sato communique describing the security of South
Korea as "essential to Japan's own security" caused
no particular stir in Japan, perhaps because of gratifi-
cation with the reversion of Okinawa.
The Nixon-Sato statement was, in fact, part of the
price of reversion, and Japan subsequently retreated
some distance from it. In 1974, when relations be-
tween Tokyo and Seoul were particularly disturbed,
the Nixon-Sato formulation was rephrased by Foreign
Minister Kimura, who eliminated any specific refer-
ences to South Korea and declared instead that
"peace and security on the entire peninsula" were
essential to Japan's security. In 1975, as the Miki
government sought ways to reassure South Korea and
bolster US resolve in the Pacific, an ingenious combi-
nation of the two approaches was devised:
The peace and security of the Republic of Korea is
essential to the peace and security of the Korean
Peninsula, which in turn is necessary for the peace
and security of East Asia, including Japan.l
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This has remained the standard formula, reiterated in
the Chun-Nakasone communique, and the Japanese
Government has resisted any efforts to alter it. In-
creasingly, however, another implicit connection has
been made in Japanese statements endorsing efforts
by South Korea to strengthen its own defenses. Thus,
at the Japan-South Korean Ministerial Conference in
September 1981, the Japanese representatives de-
clared that they "appreciated the defense efforts"
made by South Korea, which Nakasone again praised
in his January 1983 visit to Seoul, describing them in
the communique as contributing "to the maintenance
of peace on the Korean Peninsula." This phrase was
repeated in the communique following the Chun visit.
The bilateral security relationship each country main-
tains with the United States also raises the question of
a triangular defense relationship. Both the Japanese
and South Korean Governments fully appreciate the
importance to the other of the relations each main-
tains with the United States. The South Koreans
regard Japan's security ties to the United States as
vital to maintaining the military balance in the westen
Pacific and as permitting a Japanese contribution to
this balance, while putting helpful limits on the
prospects for independent employment of Japanese
military might. Japan regards the US-South Korean
security tie as an important deterrent to North Kore-
an military adventurism and a source of constructive
influence on the South. The Nixon administration's
decision in 1970 to withdraw one of the two US
infantry divisions in South Korea caused some alarm
in official circles; the early Carter administration plan
to withdraw the other evoked an even more intense
reaction.
unacceptable in Japan.
The value the Japanese place on both security rela-
tionships does not translate into any desire to see a
connection established between them. Especially as
long as the security relationship with the United
States itself remained a highly emotive issue in
Japanese politics, any suggestion that it also encom-
passed Japanese responsibilities for the defense of
South Korea could only add fuel to the fire. Even
today, when the security treaty itself has ceased to be
a subject of significant controversy, the proposition
that common bilateral ties might logically develop
into some form of triangular linkage is politically
The South Korean position on a triangular linkage is
less clear-cut. On the one hand,
;nts by high Korean officials,
have suggested that, at least over time,
this is the direction in which Seoul would like to go.
On the other hand, when the question is put directly,
any such intentions are firmly denied.
A rather complex set of considerations seems to lie
behind this somewhat murky Korean position. One is
the ever-present interest in putting pressure on Japan
to increase its economic contribution to the common
defense.
The Koreans are aware also that remarks about
triangular cooperation go down well with Americans.
But their dominant view of the triangular relationship
does not really seem to rest on the development of new
institutional forms, concerning which most Koreans
would be very cautious indeed. Rather, it encompasses
a series of principles: the United States, Japan, and
South Korea should each recognize and carry out its
own responsibilities, but should present a common
front to potential adversaries; the United States and
Japan in their defense planning and cooperation,
however, should not neglect South Korea's interests or
ignore its sovereign prerogatives.
Rejection on both sides of formal defense ties, wheth-
er triangular or bilateral, has not totally precluded
moves toward military cooperation. Such cooperation,
however, has developed very slowly and on an ex-
tremely limited basis, taking place primarily on a
service-to-service level and revolving around the ex-
change of visits and of intelligence.
Past sensitivities have declined somewhat. When the
Director of Japan's Defense Agency first visited
South Korea in July 1979, this "courtesy call," as it
was defined, attracted considerable comment. Four
years later, the fact that South Korea's Chief of Staff
accompanied Chun to Tokyo and consulted with his
uniformed counterparts was taken virtually as a mat-
ter of course. In November 1983, a formal Japanese
Cabinet statement, the main purpose of which was to
deny suggestions that Japan and South Korea were
about to embark on triangular or bilateral security
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Korea.
arrangements, nevertheless, explicity endorsed even-
tual exchange of training fleets and of students at
defense academies. Moreover, although the Cabinet
statement disclaimed any current plans for ministerial
defense consultations, it did not rule them out for the
future. Continued very close limits, however, were
demonstrated in 1983 when, after a good deal of
deliberation, the Japanese Government decided
against permitting Air Self-Defense Force planes to
exercise with US F-16s normally stationed in South
The Chun-Nakasone Factor
Prime Minister Nakasone and President Chun have
been very important in efforts to bring their countries
together. Both men, very much aware of the present
limits on their tenure, have been intent on quickening
the pace of the reconciliation and strengthening its
foundations. There is still far to go. But there are
25X1 reasons to believe that future regressions, if they
occur, will be more measured and manageable than
those of the past.
Nakasone's strategic outlook has inclined him toward
a closer Japanese relationship with South Korea
through most of his political life. As Prime Minister,
he has been able to pursue this goal together with a
South Korean counterpart who is more than ready to
meet him halfway. Chun indeed has perhaps been
freer to respond than his predecessor would have been;
Park was burdened by charges that, as a graduate of
Japan's Imperial Military Academy who had served
25X1 with the Manchurian Army, he had been a collabora-
tor during the colonial period and remained unduly
subservient to the Japanese.
their responsibility for political corruption.
However, when Nakasone assumed office toward the
end of 1982, the Japanese-South Korean relationship
had been for some time in one of its recurrent periods
of acute stress. Chun's own accession to power in 1980
and his early policies had aroused misgivings in
Japan. In addition, Chun quickly struck a blow at the
old informal network between the two countries by
removing many of the businessmen and politicians
who were its Korean mainstays from positions of
power and influence, because of what he regarded as
His economic policies and his relations with the
business community also raised serious doubts about
whether the South Korean economy would remain on
the highly successful course Park had set. The rever-
sal of what had seemed to be the beginnings of a more
democratic trend after Park's assassination, Chun's
human rights policies, the Kwangju incident, Kim
Dae Jung's death sentence-all became troublesome
political issues in Japan. These unfavorable reactions
were then aggravated by Chun's loan demand. Kore-
an resentments were correspondingly magnified by
the Japanese response and, in the summer of 1982, by
the textbook case.
By October 1982 when Nakasone took office, there
had already been some improvement in the atmo-
sphere. Kim Dae Jung's sentence had been commut-
ed, first to life imprisonment, then to 20 years. (He
was to leave for the United States in December.) In
mid-1982, agreement had been reached in the amount
of the loan, even though not on its terms. Progress had
also been made on the textbook problem. It is thus
conceivable that, as in the past, trends already in
motion would have led in due course to the restoration
of a more equable relationship. However, Nakasone's
proposal late in November that he visit South Korea
set in motion a process that has very quickly brought
quite a new tone to the relationship.
In following the path they have, both leaders have
been motivated by rather similar aspirations in the
international sphere. Nakasone, in office, has made a
conspicuous effort to strengthen Japan's international
role; Chun, on a smaller scale, has been similarly
active in his trips abroad-his request for a dialogue
with ASEAN and his proposals for a Pacific summit.
Both have seen good relations between their two
countries as an important step toward international
acceptance of their broader role and, for South Korea
particularly, toward enhancing national prestige. As
Chun was to say concerning his own trip, "It would be
difficult for us to leap into the world arena while
shutting the door to our neighbors."
Both men are determined that the past should become
much less important in the current relations between
their countries. Chun has urged Koreans to forget the
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past and look to the future. In his statement on his
departure from Seoul, he used a highly symbolic past
event to stress the importance of letting old grudges
die, quoting a passage from the 1919 declaration of
independence issued by Korean nationalists in Shang-
hai: "Busy in rallying ourselves, we can lose no time in
cursing and blaming others, and busy in providing for
the present, we can lose no time in finding fault with
the deeds of the past." The Japanese contribution to
exorcising the ghosts of the past-the Emperor's
apology-was significantly reinforced by Nakasone's
much more explicit statement.
In this two-year period, both leaders have subordinat-
ed the solution of specific problems to the creation of
the proper atmosphere. The loan issue was resolved in
time to contribute to the success of Nakasone's visit to
Seoul. And Nakasone has done a good deal to reas-
sure South Korea about Japanese intentions with
respect to the North. But on such issues as trade,
technology transfer, and the status of Koreans in
Japan, there has been little or no forward movement.
equal partner
To compensate for lack of progress on some of the
substantive issues, the Japanese tried hard to accom-
modate to Korean sensitivities on symbolic ones.
Nakasone's decision to make South Korea the scene
of his first foreign visit as Prime Minister, his use of
Korean in speeches made in Seoul, and his informality
and verve all had a significant impact softening
Korean attitudes. The establishment of a hotline
between the Blue House and Nakasone's office, fre-
quently used by the Prime Minister to brief Chun on
his trips abroad, has reinforced the impression that
Japan is at last beginning to treat South Korea as an
FFii ure 2. President Chun and Emperor Hirohito 'A,& World
In preparing for the Chun visit, the Japanese were
unwilling on constitutional grounds to comply with
Korean desires for an invitation from the Emperor
and to subject the Emperor's remarks to negotiation.
However, they provided the Koreans with the text
before Chun's arrival, agreed to Korean proposals for
the size of the delegation (even though it was twice as
big as would normally have been acceptable), and
invited the entire delegation to the Emperor's dinner.
Chun and his party were received at the airport by
Foreign Minister Abe, not the Chief of Protocol as is
customary. Nakasone, instead of giving one luncheon
in honor of his visitor, gave two, one of them an
informal family affair. To minimize echoes of Korea's
former vassal status, the Emperor's welcoming cere-
mony was kept very simple: the participants wore
business clothes rather than the usual morning dress,
other aspects of normal court protocol were set aside,
no decorations were exchanged, and the Korean gift
was relatively modest. And with a careful eye to the
reactions at home, Chun's bow to the Emperor was
minimally low.
The visits did not pass without grumbling on both
sides. The sight of the Japanese flag flying in Seoul
was disturbing to many. Chun's trip was criticized as
only another of his efforts to strengthen his domestic
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position by performing on the foreign policy stage and
as unlikely to extract any concessions from the Japa-
nese while enabling them to put the Koreans at a
disadvantage. In Japan, conservative elements were
uncomfortable with the idea of any form of Imperial
apology. However, statements and demonstrations
opposing the visit were small scale and low-key in
both countries, a far cry indeed from the intense
reaction against normalization in 1965.
This great contrast notwithstanding, the degree of
change in basic attitudes remains uncertain. Japa-
nese, often quite unconsciously, continue to display
feelings of superiority, if not contempt, while in polls
taken to ascertain how Japanese rank foreign coun-
tries, South Korea's standing remains very low. For
Koreans, who are much more obsessed with the
Japanese than the Japanese are with Koreans, bitter-
ness over the past survives. Anti-Japanese sentiments
are quite strong, for example, among today's students
even though, unlike their grandparents, they did not
live through the colonial experience and, unlike their
parents, they were not subjected to the bitterly anti-
than in English, and knowledge of Japanese is very
useful on the job market. But a heightened interest in
Japan is also a factor.
Trends in elite circles-government and business-
are more clearly positive. With the Chun-Nakasone
relationship an energizing factor, government officials
of the two countries are now carrying on a broader
and more frequent dialogue. For example, the Joint
Ministerial Conference-in the past an affair con-
fined to reading prepared statements on bilateral
issues-now includes informal exchanges and discus-
sion of multilateral issues-not as free an exchange as
with the United States, one participant commented,
but still a good beginning. Although the business
communities have always been closer than the bu-
reaucratic ones, it was nevertheless also a first when
the chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries
Japanese indoctrination of the Rhee era.
Their attitudes toward Japan are, of course, in part a
reflection of student opposition to the government.
But some part is also played by the fact that today's
students are better educated in Korean history than
their forebears, to the intensification of their national-
ist sentiments. Some also have been attracted by the
writings of contemporary dependency theorists, some
of them Japanese, who have persuaded them that
South Korea remains an exploited dependency of
Japanese monopoly capitalism.
There are, however, some scattered signs of change.
Although the South Korean Government continues to
refuse entry to Japanese films and tapes on the
grounds that the people are not yet ready for so heavy
a dose of Japanese culture, interest in each country in
learning about the other seems to be growing. A
Korean-language course is now being given daily on
Japanese TV and is proving very popular, and a book
about Japan by a Korean writer was one of 1983's
best sellers. More South Koreans are studying Japa-
nese than ever before. Practical motivations are im-
portant: for Korean students it is easier to pass
required foreign language examinations in Japanese
(FKI) was invited to the annual seminar of the
Japanese counterpart, Keidanren (Japan Federation
of Economic Organization), even though he got cold
comfort on technology transfer.
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Secret
Secret
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