Comments 4

Южно-Корейская Остполитика Муна

May 9, 2017 Yoon Young-kwan

СЕУЛ – Мун Чжэ Ин от Демократической партии Кореи, был только что избран президентом Южной Кореи. В демократической истории страны, это второй переход власти от консерваторов к либералам. Это началось неожиданно в октябре прошлого года, когда разразился коррупционный скандал с участием тогдашнего президента Пак Кын Хе, кульминацией которого стал ее импичмент и отстранение от должности в начале этого года. Хотя отстранение Пак было болезненным, оно также продемонстрировало устойчивость Южнокорейской демократии.

Мун приступит к своим обязанностям в период обострения напряженности с Северной Кореей. Чтобы понять, какого рода политику он будет проводить, необходимо ознакомиться с либеральным внешнеполитическим мышлением в Южной Корее со времен президентства Ким Дэ Чжуна в 1998-2003 годах.

Ким наблюдал, как Холодная Война в Европе подошла к мирному концу, и он хотел довести продолжающуюся конфронтацию своей страны с коммунистическим Севером до аналогичного ненасильственного исхода. Поэтому он преследовал прямое сотрудничество с Северной Кореей, а его “Политика солнечного света” была продолжена его преемником Ро Му Хёном. До того как он скончался в 2009 году, Ро (под которым я служил Министром иностранных дел) был политическим наставником и близким другом Муна.

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Yoshimichi Moriyama May 19, 2017

Mr. Jin,
I hope you will come across this. What I meant to say in my reply was that no matter how hard you or anyone may try to be as impartial and as unbiased as possible, we cannot divest ourselves of our social, cultural milieus.
I do not deny there were comfort women, but I deny they were abducted or murdered when Japan surrendered. You can read some details at the following:
http://www.seisaku-center.net/sites/ default/files/uploaded/TheComfortWomenIssueinSharperFocus.pdf.
You can also read Allen Ireland/The New Korea on the Internet at http//goo.gl/czecMx. It is about Japan's rule in Korea.
Thank you.
Robert Mullen May 19, 2017

Perhaps the best strategy for a Greater Korea is for the South to build "their" atomic capability in the rural, undeveloped North. All nuclear powers did their development and testing in the hinterlands or colonies. When the work is done the two sides can join as equals, marrying a powerful economy to a modern strategic defense.
- Yoshimichi Moriyama May 19, 2017
  
  Mr. Mullen,
  The Park Chung-hee administration clandentinely tried to develop nuclear weapons, but it was discovered by the United States and President Park gave it up. He was the father of President Park Geun-hye now impeached.
  Your suggestion is interesting. But the South and the North are at loggerheads. Marriage is impossible.
j. von Hettlingen May 12, 2017

Yoon Young-kwan, who had served as foreign minister under Roh Moo-hyun, a "political mentor and close friend" to the newly elected Moon Jae-in, highlights the ambition of the new administration - the pursuit of "an updated and renewed version of the Sunshine Policy" and a German-style of reunification of the two Koreas.
Inspired by Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik with East Germany in the 1970s, Moon's liberal predecessor, Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) became archtitect of South Korea's "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the North, which his successor Roh Moo-hyun maintained between 2003–2008. Kim had spent his life pursuing democracy and reunification with Pyongyang. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for the biggest achievement of his presidency - the landmark summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000, paving the way for reconciliation.
Brandt's successors were the Social Democrat, Helmut Schmidt (1974-1982) and Helmut Kohl of the opposition party, who carried on "the policy after he came to power in 1982." The author says, "although Ostpolitik could not change the East German regime’s nature, it did make East Germany heavily dependent on West Germany, and gave Kohl significant political leverage during the reunification process."
While Moon aims to resume the Sunshine Policy, he faces the challenge of dealing with a North Korea, whose nucelar ambition poses a threat to the region, since its inception in 1980s. He and "his supporters nonetheless find it regrettable that conservative South Korean presidents since Lee Myung-bak did not maintain the Sunshine Policy, as Kohl had done with Ostpolitik. If they had, North Korea might have become more dependent on South Korea than on China, in which case US and South Korean leaders would not have to plead constantly with China to rein in the North Korean regime."
However clouds gathered over the Sunshine Policy already in 2001 when George W. Bush told Kim that there would be no further talks with the North until Washington had reviewed its policy towards Pyongyang. North Korean missile tests and nuclear intentions made it more difficult for Kim to prepare for the visit to Seoul by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il later that year. In December 2008 the conservative, Lee Myung-bak won big, because South Korean voters overwhelmingly rejected a decade of centre-left rule. There was growing disillusion with the Sunshine Policy, which despite a decade of no-strings aid, hadn't reined in Pyongyang's nuclear ambition. Its missile test in 2006 was a slap in the face for Seoul.
Under Lee the sun set on Kim's legacy. The last nine years Seoul and Washington have forged closer ties, imposing tighter sanctions. In response the North became more aggressive. Following the attack on the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, that killed 46 crew members and the shelling of a South Korean border island, Yeonpyeong, killing four people, "conservative presidents – especially Park – cut all contacts with North Korea," trying at the same time "to push it toward denuclearization."
Moon faces the daunting task of convincing Pyongyang that the South doesn't want a regime change, while appeasing Beijing that THAAD, the US anti-missile system on South Korean soil won't pose a security threat to China, and that a reunification with the North won't turn the South into a US satellite state. Most of all he has to assure Washington that Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal won't be used to hit the US. But South Koreans' concern has been economy, corruption and the stubbornly high youth unemployment. Given the enormous costs involved in absorbing the North, they have little appetite for a reunification anytime soon.
Yoshimichi Moriyama May 11, 2017

Brandt was criticized for Ostpolitk as renouncing one Germany, but the New York Times defended him in the editorial that the policy was based on his realistic recognition of the improbability of unification in the foreseeably immediate future. When we look back, we know now that he was unknowingly sowing a seed for it. West Germans could pay the finacial costs and the East German leaders knew the inevitability of the event.
As some South Koreans say, South Korean economy is in dire trouble (and it is reported in Japan it is why young people's votes went to Mr. Moon,) and too small to bear the economic burdens from unification. The North's regime wants the unification by absorbing the South, not to be absorbed. This is one big reason why it wants to develop nuclear weapons at all costs. What Mr. Yoon refers to as liberals have in effect aided it in spite of their best intention. I do not know if I correctly understand the situation, but a unified Korea would not be sanctioned by China unless it is pro-China.
A group of people from Standford University made a comparative study of school history textbooks of Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and the United States. The Korean ones were national fantasy in their conclusion. (Incidentally the Japanese books were given the highest rating as most impartial and least nationalitic.) President Roh said publicly that South Korea should play the role of a balancer in the Sino-American muscle-flexing. It was fantasy. It all comes from the fact that Korean culture is more Confucianist than Chinese culture is.
Japan's invasion of the peninsula was dictated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi against the strong opposition of his generals. The generals quickly withdrew and came back upon Hideyoshi's death. He was the nouveau riche that Japan had not seen before and has not seen since.
The Sino-Japanese warof 1894 was different. It was the war Japan fought for national defense. Unfortunately China, Korea and Japan were all embroiled in the Russo-British imperialism surrounding the peninsula. Innitially Japan wanted China to take the lead in setting up the coalition of the three. The Japanese request was simply snubbed by China, so Japan had to do it alone to keep Korea an independent country. It was then that Korea became an independent country in modern times, released from the Chinese tutulege. Korea had military ambition on Japan but a little bit too weak to carry it out. It wanted some other powerful countries like Mongols to do it instead. Koreans have historically entertained the idea which have disdainfully looked down on Japanese, as Sonfa Oh says in Getting Over It: Why Korea Needs To Stop Bashing Japan. (The book was first published in Japananese with the title of Anti-Japanese South Korea Does Not Have A Future.) Oh was a South Korean formally and a naturalized Japanese now. Her Getting Over It succinclty tells Korean Japanophobia and lies. I wish South Korea stopped spreading lies like "Japan kidnapped twenty hundred thousand women to work in prostitution or Japan has not been contrite for its past."
- Yoshimichi Moriyama May 16, 2017
  
  Mr. Wagner,
  I sent a comment to the Council on Foreign Relaitons On Line/David S. Law/Three Misconceptions About the Japanese Constitution. It is not pasted yet.
  http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2017/05/09/three-misconceptions-japanese-constitution.
  
  I said something as follows: Chinese academics and intellectuals are traditionally supporters rather than opponents of the state; in the 1950s and 60s China was noisy with vitriolic anti-American propaganda but no anti-Japanese speeches. In the 60s the CCP started hysterical anti-Russian propaganda, but no anti-Japanese campaign. Anti-Americanism stopped overnight in the 70s. They were fishing for Richard Nixon. They were seeking economic contact with Japan hroughout these decades. One aim in the rapprochment with the United States was that detente with America would make it easier for Japan to come closer to Beijing. Tokyo and Beijing signed a Peace Treaty in August, 1978.　　Deng Xiaoping came to Japan and showered Japan with a lot of eulogy.
  China started its anti=Japanese policy after 1989. The Tiananment Protest shocked the CCP so much that frightened Deng and other leaders wanted to save the CCP, not the people as usual in China. They thought out a patriotic, anti-Japanese campaign so that frustrated students and intellectuals could take it all out on Japan. Mao was a great leader or a poor leader, Japan apologised or did not apologise? It is all decided by the CCP's political expediency. Philosopher Confucius is extolled for overseas audience today but some time ago he was denounced. It is all expediency. The Chinese logic of 2 + 2 = 5 (Jeffrey Wasserstrom, China In the 21st Century) is internationally famous. It can be any numbers except 4, all depending on political convenience or inconvenience.
  Germany had France, but Japan does not have a France. The anti-Japanese policy serves well for China's hegemonial thinking. Perhaps a lot of things are familiar to Japanese but unfamiliar to those who live a long distance away from here. Just one of them. Chinese were sorry of couse to be defeated in the Opium War but they thought they could go on with their way of life; they thought the Western devils with blue eyes would ultimately know the greatness of China and kow-tow; they did not at all feel the need to change their way. The Sino-Japanese war of 1894~95 was different: the magnitude of the shock was the one that the world boxing champion of the heavyweight class would have felt when knocked down by a novice of the flyweight class who just started learning boxing the day before. They began to think something was critically wrong with their society and a lot of people came to Japan such as Sun Yatsen, Chiang Kaishek, Zhou Enlai－they were assisted by Japanese nationalists－ in order to know the secret of Japan's successful transformation. But in China pupils and young people are taught that China learned a lesson from how they were dealt with by the Western people in the Opium War. One of the two events that devastated the pride of the Chinese diplomatic circle in the twentieth century was that Japan had a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations like Great Britain and France but China did not have one.
- Yoshimichi Moriyama May 15, 2017
  
  Mr. Wagner,
  Please read my reply to Mr. Jin below. I did not deny the existence of comfort women. For this, read my (Michi's) comment, American Humanism, on The Chinese Comfort Women, amazon usa.
  As for the contrition or noncontrition and repentance or nonrepentance of the Japanese and Germans, I would like you to read my three comments on Pro-Syn/Emily S, Chen/The Surrender of Japan's Peace Constitution/April 6, 2016. What is often said is that Germany had France but Japan did not have France. Which country plays the role of France in its relationship to Japan? Both China and Korea are Confucianist countries but Japan is not a Confucianist country. For this, I would like to read my (Michi's) three comments on Simon Louie/Why war with North Korea is the alternative, On Line Opinion, Australia.
  http://www.onlineopinion.com/au/view.asp?article=19014.
  
  Japan was not a totalitarian country unlike Germany. Nazi Germany wanted to invade Eatern Europe and Russia. But Japan wanted to extricate itself from the quagmire of war with China that had lasted over four years and avoid war with the United States. Though Germany was not the cradle of European civilization, the civilization spread from Germany eastward. And traditionally, though not present day, Germans were rather contemptuous of Slav peole at least culturally if not racially. In East Asia China was the cradle of Sinic civilization, Japan borrowing a lot from China, and, though Japan invaded China in modern history, the Chinese were contemptuous of the Japanese. The following proportional expression does not hold: Germans : Slavs = Japanese : Chinese like 1 : 3 = 2 : 6 = 3 : 9.
  "Chinese feelings of cultural superiority are monumental, deriving as they are from a three thousand year tradition...the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelings of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt. The Japanese nostalgia for China has been a classic case of unrequited love (Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese, 1968)." What Reischauer was speaking of the Japanese love of China applies throughout the thousand year relationship, not only in the postwar era as the book was published in 1968. I will appreciate if you read my six comments on EastAsiaForum/Alexis Dudden/Abe caught out in school scandal,
  http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/03/12/abe-caught-out-in-school-scandal,
  and two comments on Asia Unbound/Sheila Smith/Looking Ahead in Asia, With Our Allies
  http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2016/11/30/looking-ahead-in-asia-with-our-allies/
  and one comment, It Is Not China's Fault, Nov. 16, 2015, on Michael Pillsbury/The Hundred-Year Marathon, amazon usa.
  
  Perhaps I will be back here again within a week as I have another comment I would like you to read, but it has not been "pasted" by the blogger.
- Yoshimichi Moriyama May 15, 2017
  
  Mr. Jin,
  "Your perspective of the history of ...deeply rooted from the Japnese version of East Asian history." I agree. Can you say your version is not rooted from the South Korean version of East Asina history? I am not good at the Internet, but you can read a short summary of the Stanford's people's study in Japanese and English. Perhaps you can get there by "The Asian countries' history textbooks (アジアの...)
  http://bach1616.seesaa.net.article/260088483.html.
  
  "...the best colonial master of all time has been Japan, for no ex-colonies have done so well as (South) Korea and Taiwan...the postcolonisl success also testifies to the colonial legacy: the economic rationality of Japanese administration which undertook in the colonies 'superbly successful effort which Japan itself had undertaken...The world belongs to those with a clear conscience, something Japan has had in near-unanimous abundance (David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations)." I don't have a book of statistics here but I can say so far as I remember, though not perfectly correctly, that during the 35 years the Korean populatin almost doubled; the average annual economic grow rate was at least more than 3% from 1911 through 1938 and this continual rate for about thirty years was unusual anywhere in the world at that time; the ratio of farming, forestry and fishery in the national income declined from 80% to 43% while that of industrial production rose 18% to 41% in the periold of 1918 ti 1944; elementary education had been introduced but hardly spread and most Koreans could not read the Hangul or Korean alphabet, but more than 75% of the Korean people born in the 1930s went to primary school and 17% had received twelve years' education; the railways had been constructed before 1911 but the total mileage extended enormously. I am sorry I don't have a statitiscs book. Schools for vocational training were built as more and more young people began to go to tecknical and vocational schools as ecnomy grew. Several years ago two Japanese graduates from Nagoya National (Imperial in prewar Japan) were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics, but Seol Imperial Universtity had been built and started before Nagoya. Where in Egypt did Great Britain build a university comparable to Oxford or Cambridge? What may sound unbelievable is the fact that until around 1970 North Korea was industrially and economically better developed than the South because of the industrial facilities and plants left by the Japanese. Japan spent more money in the development of Korea and Taiwan than it drew out money from the management of them. About six hundred and fifty thousand Koreans, from South and North, chose to remain in Japan after it was defeated. Many who once went back to South Korea tried to come back to Japan illegally. During the World War II a great number of Eastern Europeans had been taken to Nazi Germany to work on farms and in factories as Germany suffered a terrible shortage of workforce. I do not know how many of them chose to remain.
  
  I will not go any further in the interest of space here, but had Japan been geographically situated in places like Norway or Switzerland, it would have been saved from expansion into the Korean Peninsula. Great Britain and Czarist Russian appeared to be carving Korea. The game had to be stopped to prevent this international sports from escalating onto Japan. Japan chose Great Britain as a friend because G. Britain was rather interested in commercial opportunities while Russia harbored territorial ambition.
  
  As for comfort women, you seem to say I denied that there were comfort women. Please read my (Michi's) comment, American Humanism, on The Chinese Comfort Women, amazon usa.
  
  Of course I hope North Korean denuclearization will be achieved without war, but I am afraid that unless the United States is fully ready to use its military power if need be any sort of dialogue with Kim Jong-un would give hime more time.
- Frank Wagner May 15, 2017
  
  Dear Mr.Moriyama,
  I think your interpretation of historical events are somewhat misleading and wrong. Do you deny the existence of comfort women? Do you really think Japan defended itself in the Sino-Japanese war? Maybe you should take a look at the Encyclopedia Britannica and find out the truth. As A German, I am wondering my whole life why it is such a problem for Japanese to admit that their WWII generations have committed an endless number of war crimes? In Germany nearly nobody (except some national extremists) take the genocide to Jews or the endless massacres committed by German soldiers in Russia into question.
- Sungeun Jin May 14, 2017
  
  Dear sir,
  
  I regret to say that your perspective of the history over Korea, Japan and China seems to be deeply rooted from the Japanese-version of East Asian history.
  
  How can your interpretation of the benevolent Japan reconcile with the occupation of imperial Japan of Korea for over 35 years? Not to mention your claim that war-time 'comfort women' is a simply a lie "made in Korea" - despite the fact other countries including China and Taiwan - were victimized and demands Japanese apology is disturbing, your reference to Stanford research is also problematic at the least. With simple google search, one can find what the research was. The research was about addressing the issue of divided historical interpretation by each subject country - namely Korea, Japan, and China - to ultimately call for reconciliation of history from all.
  
  Also, you mentioned that the dire economic condition of Korea and the small size of Korean economy simply make South-led unification not an option. Yet, as an ordinary Korean citizen, I believe the majority of Koreans view the unification a "process" not an "over-night change". As pricey as the cost of communication with the North might be, I view 'military intervention' will cost more, including potential civilian casualties and harm to the economy, and prefer to bring the North to the negotiation table. In doing so, Koreans hope to see the country to have its legitimate seat, instead of 'tiptoeing' between the US and China. I am nothing but an ordinary Korean citizen, yet I believe many share such view, especially among those who supported President Moon during the recent election.
- Yoshimichi Moriyama May 14, 2017
  
  I am afraid the best policy for the new President of South Korea will be to toe the line. "Many policies have been tried over the last two decades, but none has had the slightest effect in changing the nuclear policy of North Korea. As unpalatable as it may seem, the only alternative left may be military intervention (Simon Louie, Why war with North Korea will be the only alternative, On Line Opinion)."
  http://www.onlineopinion.com/au/view.asp?article=19014.
  
  I (Michi) posted three comments on it. I shall be pleased if anyone reads them. I am sure he/she will know something about Confucianist culture.

http://prosyn.org/5e0o6wA/ru;

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