By This is a opportunity for Japan to better build relations with South Korea even though I don’t think the emperor repenting will do much in the grand scheme of things to repair the historical animosity between the two countries:
Prime Minister Chung Un-chan says if Japanese Emperor Akihito visits South Korea, he should repent for Japan’s wrongdoings during the colonial era and express commitment to a new relationship with South Korea.
Seoul is still awaiting a response from the emperor regarding an invitation extended to him by President Lee Myung-bak. [KBS Global]
5:44 pm on February 5th, 2010 1
OMG … the Japanese emperor getting repented for the Japanese colonization???? Oh c`mon ……. It will never happen…..
Just leave him alone.
He should never come to Korea. The memory of the colonization era is still fresh in the memory of Koreans. Wait 100 years more to do so.
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February 6th, 2010 at 3:11 am
It took the British crown 250 years to issue a simple acknowledgment about one of its past injustices:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_2003
So, yes, monarchists are rarely apologetic…but that’s exactly why people should hound him about it.
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6:29 pm on February 5th, 2010 2
Japan and Korea should ally against China. China’s economy will be more than theirs combined, and China’s influence is by far the greatest in Asia.
Japan and Korea should ally with India against China as well.
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February 6th, 2010 at 9:38 am
No, Japan and China should ally against Korea. Koreans hate them both and everyone else for that matter. They even hate their friend’s/allies and people who have never done anything to them. They’ve proven it again and again. People like the Korean who calls himself “Tom” have also proven this.
Almost no Japanese from the WW2 generation are alive. The same goes for Koreans. Yet Koreans are still taught to hate the Japanese. I’ve heard so many times, particularly from young Koreans how they want to “kill” Japanese people for what “they” did to Korea.
Who are “they” anyway? The little toddlers?
If Koreans hate the US, there’s nothing the Japanese will ever be able to do.
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February 6th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Oh, and what the Japanese did to the rest of Asia was bad, I do not disagree with that. The rest of the world forgiven Germany, but it seems most Korean nationals just love to hate- including the people who freed them from Japan.
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February 6th, 2010 at 10:17 am
HA! Let’s see the Japanese show the level of contrition that the Germans have shown, then we’ll talk.
February 6th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Almost no Japanese from the WW2 generation are alive. The same goes for Koreans. Yet Koreans are still taught to hate the Japanese.
Actually, there are four or five million people in Japan who are over eighty, an age such that they would have been well in their teens when the war ended. (See here for population pyramid.)
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6:47 pm on February 5th, 2010 3
The emperor apologizing undermines denials by the right-wing historical revisionists in Japan, the Yushukanists, the same ones who blame the US for starting World War II.
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February 6th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Are they linked to the Koreans who blame the US and it’s South Korean supporters for starting the Korean War?
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February 6th, 2010 at 11:17 am
No, JohnT, they are polar opposites, but they have similar methods. (See here for an explanation of the chinboistas and their methods of trying to influence politics and pressure the government by mobilizing and whipping up the “vocal fringe.”)
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6:57 pm on February 5th, 2010 4
At first I thought the editing was done here on this blog, but then I looked at the KBS article and saw that it was they who upgraded the Prime Minister’s comment from “should repent” to “must repent.”
I thought it seemed unusual to offer an invitation and then make it publicly conditional on directive demands.
I don’t know the Korean language well enough to say that the translated difference is significant to Koreans, but there is a big difference in English.
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February 6th, 2010 at 6:26 am
The Prime Minister’s actual words used the phrase “hae-ya handa,” whose English equivalents are “should” or “have to,” depending on the context. Reading his words in Korean, I would interpret the remark as “should,” not “have to” or “must.” If I feel amibitious, I might check to see how it was translated into Japanese.
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8:26 pm on February 5th, 2010 5
Why not?
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February 6th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
The very next day the right wing extremist in Japan or some other political opportunist would do something to drum up tensions while in Korea the Dokdo Jihadists as Sonagi likes to call them will say the apology is insincere and pull out their usual bag of tricks.
There are still too many extremists on each side of this debate to get anything of any significance done.
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February 6th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Excellent point. But I wonder if the Emperor’s words would be strong enough such that the right wingers in Japan might temper their rhetoric. Then again, I really have no knowledge of how weighty the Emperor’s words are in Japan.
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February 6th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
The “extremists” can successfully diminish the power of a PM apology, but not so with the Emperor’s, who (if I understand correctly) has the power to apologize on behalf of things done in the name of the Emperor, which was all of World War II. Certain rightwingers would be very upset were the Emperor to acknowledge wrongdoing by Japan. (I dare say he might even be putting his life in danger.) It galls them that the Emperor has not visited Yasukuni since the enshrinement of the Yasukuni-14 (see here) in the late 1970s.
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10:39 pm on February 5th, 2010 6
Then, why is the president extending an invitation to him?
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February 5th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Because President Lee Myungbak was born in Osaka, Japan. Preparing for the time, decades in the future, right-wing propagandists prepared the young Myungbak, Manchurian Candidate-style, for the day when he would be called upon to do their bidding.
Um, either that or the PM is an independent person giving his independent opinion (though he probably should keep his mouth shut if this is running contrary to the prez’s policies).
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February 7th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Manchurian candidate …
Man, I though it was a serious history ….
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7:44 am on February 6th, 2010 7
An apology still wouldn’t be good enough for Koreans. Japanese PM’s have apologised before and it’s never enough. Most Koreans know not to apologise because people won’t stop until you have paid more than the financial damages and/or commit suicide. Japan should just move on and not inflame things (like the warrior shrine) like giving 10 Yen out to compensation “victims”. It will help Korea get over the past too and not make the Japanese look their worst. Last, citizens of these countries should not be stirred up by slimy politicians looking to deflect discontent with their governance.
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February 6th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Which apologies were made by the PMs as official statements of the Japanese government (i.e., not ones that were expressions of the PMs as individuals)? If we focus on that, then maybe we can look at this more closely.
At any rate, an apology by the Emperor himself would be a very different animal than an apology by the PM. If Hatoyama were to give one, just like that of the sincere and heartfelt apologies or expressions of regret of Murayama or Hosokawa, strong elements within the LDP would try to undermine it as a statement of the government.
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10:03 am on February 6th, 2010 8
That’s right, but like I said before, Koreans even hate their allies.
Korea was saved by the US and other foreign nations during WW2, the Korean War and the economic crisis in the late 90’s. You know the “IMF” period where their economy was saved, but they hate the IMF just the same despite the fact it was their fault.
The Japanese can make more apologies, but according to Koreans, the ones they made were not “sincere” and it seems the money the Japanese gave Korea was really nothing.
Koreans are taught to hate the Japanese-remember the anti-Japanese subway art? That shit was done at school under the supervison of a Korean teacher.
Don’t expect much more from most of these people.
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February 6th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Setting aside the red herring that is the Korea-U.S. relations…
I hit you, and I say I am sorry. Then I turn around and tell everyone that I am so glad that I hit you. Was my apology sincere?
It really WAS nothing. Japan essentially paid $11,000 per death it caused in Korea in 2009 dollars under the Basic Treaty. That’s laughably low by both Japanese and Korean standards.
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11:21 am on February 6th, 2010 9
@Mashimaro
I admire PM Murayama’s apology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_occasion_of_the_50th_anniversary_of_the_war%27s_end
However, Koreans are justified in their anger when major figures in the Japanese gov’t and SDF try to justify their country’s actions during WWII.
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February 6th, 2010 at 11:24 am
The LDP made it clear that Murayama’s apology was his own personal statement and not a statement of the government he led.
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February 7th, 2010 at 2:08 am
Oh. I did not know this. Thank you for telling me.
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February 7th, 2010 at 11:04 am
PMs Murayama and Hosokawa — both non-LDP — were quite serious about making Japanese aware of the atrocities committed in the name of their country. Much more like the “German model.”
But we can’t say the LDP is completely unlike the German model, either. The sacking of the Air Force head in 2008 or 2009 was analogous to sacking a German military chief over Holocaust denial or Hitler praise.
5:11 am on February 7th, 2010 10
Sorry.
Sometimes you just have to brute-force the arbitrary discrimination of the spam filter…
…not a proud or elegant solution… but… computers eventually do what I want them to do… not the other way around.
Today’s bazaar filter:
“ssppeecciiaalliisstt”
Who would of guessed? Usually, it is the work CCOOCCKK accidentally spelled in the middle of a word… like, “Mr. Handcoock said, blah blah, blah.”
But speciaalist?
Oh. Wait. I get it, now. Ciaalis. (with one a)
I feel so square.
But I guess it is better than crosswords and more legal than hacking a database.
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10:31 am on February 7th, 2010 11
It won’t matter even if he does apologize, Koreans would rather view themselves as victims then get off their asses.
Japan has apologized numerous times about the war. Anybody who has lived in Korea for a couple years knows that all the riots and marches aren’t based in reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan
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February 7th, 2010 at 11:15 am
If there’s one thing you can say about Koreans since the war, it’s that they would rather not get off their asses.
The problem with that Wikipedia list, James, is that it provides no context, such as the fact that Murayama’s apology was — thanks to the LDP — clearly his own view and not the view of the government.
From the August 28, 1995 edition of Time:
Previous Prime Ministers used the term hansei, a fudge word meaning “regret,” to express some measure of sorrow. Since his election last year, Murayama, a socialist at the head of an unwieldy coalition dominated by conservative Liberal Democrats, has been determined to show that Japan could at last admit its guilt. Liberal Democrats made sure the final wording of a Diet resolution was bloodless. So Murayama chose to speak out on his own, a bold act for a Prime Minister in the highly choreographed world of Japanese politics.
There are better contemporary articles on this, which explain how Murayama’s apology was just his own, but I’ve got other things to do this morning, so I’ll just leave that. This is some of the context not provided by the Wikipedia article that gets linked so often.
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February 7th, 2010 at 11:29 am
James,
The Koreans were in fact the victims of Japanese atrocities. Do you have any doubt about it?
Apologies? Oh sure … so many times they “apologized” and so many times they gave proof of their constricted and sorrow hearts by honoring the glory of their imperial army and insulting the memory of the victims of their imperialism ambition in Asia. It seems that the Japanese people (and you) have a different concept of what apology is when it comes to war crimes.
Buddy, the criminal forgets the crimes, but the victim never … Japan has the power to stop the complains from Koreans, and Hatoyama seems to be willing to do something about it, but despite of the fact that people like him acknowledges that Japan still owes a proper apology to Korea morons like you prefer to deal this matter by insulting even more the victims. Is this some kind of Japanese way to say sorry?
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2:47 am on February 8th, 2010 12
Didn’t the Japanese “repent” dozens of times before?
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February 8th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
No.
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